Meanwhile, the recent eClinicalMedicine study compared infected and uninfected participants on a set of cognitive tests.

Although this only applied to certain strains, when infected they produced fewer spores than the uninfected fungi.

From identifying affected IT systems to decrypting servers, uninstalling non-functional applications, blocking connections, disabling accounts, and restoring uninfected backups, each step can create bottlenecks.

Researchers analyzed leishmaniasis lesions on mouse skin to detect metabolic signaling pathways that differed from uninfected mice.

"It's a speculation at this point, but the itch-scratch cycle could benefit the microbes and enable their spread to distant body sites and to uninfected hosts," Deng said.