Moving to Arizona for the climate was once a necessity for those wanting relief from the humidity and cold. The dry desert air was thought to be the answer for asthma and allergy sufferers. But now the tables have turned.

Besides allergens such as mold and pollen plaguing the Southwest, Arizona statistics show that reported cases of Valley Fever are at a record high.

As of the end of April 2006, there were 2,305 cases of Valley Fever infection reported in the state, according to Janet Stark, spokeswoman for the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center. That’s four times the average of the last five years for the four same months and it’s already more than 85 percent of the annual average of 2,732 cases over the last five years.

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It is estimated there are about 150,000 infections each year in the

southwestern United States.

“We are in the middle of a real upsurge,” said Dr. John N. Galgiani, director of the Valley Fever Center for Excellence (VFCE), which is located at the VA Medical Center, 3601 S. 6th Ave. “We can technically call it an epidemic because the increased numbers of cases we are seeing in the last few months.”

Valley Fever is “coccidioidomycosis,” often shortened to cocci, meaning a fungal infection caused by coccidioides, which lives in the soil in areas of low rainfall, high summer and moderate winter temperatures.

When the soil is disturbed due to construction, wind or other activities, the fungal spores are released into the air and inhaled into the lungs, which begins the infection process.

“A very strong possibility for the increase this year is the fact that we had no rain over the winter,” Galgiani said. “Consequently, the spores that are in the dirt never got wet and were released with the dust and flying around.”

Galgiani is not only a UA professor of medicine, he’s also a full-time VA staff physician, a position he has held since 1978.

The VFCE, established in 1996 is jointly sponsored by the UA and Southern Arizona VA Health Care System. The facility is one of eight specialty centers that are part of the the Center of Excellence in the College of Medicine.

The VFCE describes Valley Fever as an airborne fungal infection that is endemic to the southwestern desert region of the United States and parts of Mexico. In Arizona, the most intensely prevalent regions are Pima, Pinal and Maricopa counties.

A small number of infections lead to much more serious complications, including progressively severe pneumonia. The fungus may also travel through the blood stream from the lungs to other parts of the body such as the skin, the bones or the brain. For these complications, treatment is usually needed.

Valley Fever is diagnosed through a specific blood test called a cocci serology, which any doctor can order. According to Galgiani, unless the test is administered, Valley Fever is responsible for approximately one of every three patients being treated for what their doctors think is a community-acquired pneumonia caused by bacteria.

“They treat it with antibiotics, as if the patient had a bacterial infection, and antibiotics have no effect on a fungus which causes Valley Fever,” Galgiani said. “It very often goes undiagnosed and people just ride it out by themselves. A patient I saw recently had to literally insist that his physician order the test because the doctor didn’t think it was Valley Fever. When the results came back, it was positive for the disease.”

There is no cure for Valley Fever.

Most individuals (60 percent) may have only mild flu-like symptoms and do not seek treatment. For those individuals, the body’s natural immune system may fight the infection.

For other people who have more severe symptoms, treatment with anti-fungal medication is an option, but the VFCE has made headway in its research department with a new drug, nikkomycin Z, which has the potential for eliminating the fungus from infected tissue and thereby curbing the infection.

E-mail comments for publication to editor@azbiz.com. Contact Regina Ford, a reporter at the Green Valley News, by e-mail at rford@gvnews.com, or call (520) 547-9740.

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