Infection control teams have spent a decade asking the same question about Candida auris: why can it not be scrubbed off? Patients colonized with the drug-resistant fungus carry it on their skin without symptoms, sometimes for months, and no approved treatment reliably clears it. When they transfer between facilities, the fungus travels with them.
Researchers at UC San Francisco now report an answer that is more unsettling than simple stubbornness. In mice, C. auris takes refuge inside hair follicles and reshapes the skin's immune response so those defenses work in its favor.
