Original title: Aspergillus and Candida in primary and secondary immunodeficiencies in USIDNET
Samantha Starkey, USIDNET Consortium, Kathleen Sullivan · September 2026
Certain fungi strike people whose immune systems cannot fight back properly. Doctors know that infections like aspergillus link to specific genetic immune flaws, but they did not know how reliably this fungus flags those conditions. Researchers explored a registry called USIDNET. They pulled records of patients with aspergillus and candida, focusing strictly on deep infections inside the body. They tracked the underlying medical conditions and settings, including bone marrow transplants. They discovered that these fungal illnesses do not just signal the expected defects in scavenger cells or fighter T cells. Instead, both fungi also appeared in people with antibody disorders. Because these fungi show up across a wide variety of inherited immune system errors, doctors should run a broader set of tests whenever patients catch them.
Imagine a smoke detector that only goes off for kitchen fires. You assume the fire is always in the kitchen, so you only check there. But sometimes the smoke comes from a different room, and you miss the real fire. In this paper, the fungal infections are like the smoke detector. Doctors usually check only for certain immune problems (the kitchen), but the study shows these infections can signal a wider range of immune disorders (fires in other rooms). So doctors should search more broadly.
When a patient gets a deep fungal infection like aspergillus or candida, doctors often check for specific immune problems like myeloid or T cell disorders. This study shows these infections can also point to other types of immune deficiencies. That means doctors should run broader diagnostic tests, potentially catching hidden immune disorders sooner.
The abstract doesn't explicitly state limitations, but the study is based on a registry and diagnosis codes, which may have incomplete data. The sample sizes are small (41 and 64 patients). It shows association, not causation.
Ask anything about this paper. Answers come from its abstract, and say so when the abstract doesn't cover your question.
Aspergillus and Candida in primary and secondary immunodeficiencies in USIDNET — Samantha Starkey, USIDNET Consortium, Kathleen Sullivan — medRxiv — doi:10.64898/2026.09.11.26362658
Abstract licence: CC0
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper. This is a preprint, so it hasn't necessarily been peer reviewed.