Two people in the United States with normally functioning immune systems developed chronic lumps under the skin of their elbows, and the cause turned out to be a genus of fungus that ordinarily spends its life decaying dead wood.
The report appears in the September issue of the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, authored by G. S. Tansarli and colleagues. Both patients had chronic subcutaneous infection caused by Fomitiporella species, filamentous fungi in the phylum Basidiomycota. That is the group that shows up in the environment as gilled mushrooms and as the shelf or bracket fungi that grow off dead trunks and fallen logs, breaking the wood down. Almost none of them have any history of infecting people.
