fungal disease vs bacterial disease

[JHUT]

Why is a fungal disease more difficult to control and treat as opposed to a bacterial one?? I know they are aggressive and can spreadly quickly.. but not sure what else

[biohazard]

Fungal diseases are difficult to treat mainly because they are eukaryotic organisms just like us humans, and therefore have less differences for drugs to target without harming the human body as well. Most antibiotics target e.g. the peptidoglycan layer in the bacterial (a prokaryote) cell wall, which is a safe target since eukaryotic cells do not have equivalent structures. Similarly many differences in metabolic pathways between humans and prokaryotes is often targeted by antibiotics, but metabolism of fungi and humans is much more uniform, and hence it is difficult to exclusively target the fungi only.

Another aspect that comes to mind is the nature of (systemic) fungal infections to mainly occur in old, sick or immunosuppressed persons, which in turn makes the persons' immune systems too weak to fight the infection, even with the help of the few anti-fungal drugs there are - a functional immune system is usually required for any antimicrobial treatment to be effective. Even if the acute fungemia or the clinical disease seems to be cured, there can be fungal colonies or dormant spores within the body that remain unaffected - or the susceptible individual soon acquires the same disease from their environment, where the fungus is often present. (Fungal diseases are difficult to treat mainly because they are eukaryotic organisms just like us humans, and therefore have less differences for drugs to target without harming the human body as well. Most antibiotics target e.g. the peptidoglycan layer in the bacterial (a prokaryote) cell wall, which is a safe target since eukaryotic cells do not have equivalent structures. Similarly many differences in metabolic pathways between humans and prokaryotes is often targeted by antibiotics, but metabolism of fungi and humans is much more uniform, and hence it is difficult to exclusively target the fungi only.

Another aspect that comes to mind is the nature of (systemic) fungal infections to mainly occur in old, sick or immunosuppressed persons, which in turn makes the persons' immune systems too weak to fight the infection, even with the help of the few anti-fungal drugs there are - a functional immune system is usually required for any antimicrobial treatment to be effective.

(Even if the acute fungemia or the clinical disease seems to be cured, there can be fungal colonies or dormant spores within the body that remain unaffected - or the susceptible individual soon acquires the same disease from their environment, where the fungus is often present. This, however, applies to several bacteria as well.)

[Cristgonz]

Bacterials and Fungals can make new races if the controlling methods are a little agressive.
for example if i use Copper salt in a high density and so many applications per month to control <Pseudomona syringae pv. syringae> in pear bacteriosis, the bacteria will be more resistant to this controlling method.
The different with the fungal, is that they make their vital cycle (Sexual and asexual reproduction) to produce spores (Sexs and asexs ones), so you can control fungal's diseases more easily:).
I fight with both ones every single day of the year X_x, and i think a bacterial disease is more difficult to control than the fungal one.

i hope i has expressed well.

[Cristgonz]

i forgot to mention that you always have to attack the susceptible time of the micro-organmisms.
and the control always has to be a preventive control

[biohazard]

Indeed, my answer mainly focuses on infections in humans, but this was hopefully apparent from the text - fungal and bacterial infections can of course be different on plants, even though the underlying differences between eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells still remain.