A deadly ‘superbug’ which has started to infect humans evolved because of global warming, scientists believe.

The fungus, called Candida auris (C.auris), was first identified in Japan in 2009, in the ear canal of a 70-year-old woman and has since spread rapidly around the globe, emerging in five continents, with the first UK case detected in 2013.

Since then it has caused several outbreaks in at least 55 hospitals across Britain, infecting more than 200 patients, and linked to the deaths of eight.

Public health experts are alarmed by the rapid spread of the fungus, has been likened to a ‘superbug’ because it has proved resistant to the main three classes of drug treatment.

But researchers now believe that as global temperatures have warmed, C.auris evolved to thrive in conditions which mirror the internal temperature of the body - 36 to 37C - making humans a perfect breeding ground.

“The reasons that fungal infections are so rare in humans is that most of the fungi in the environment cannot grow at the temperatures of our body,” said lead author Dr Arturo Casadevall, a molecular microbiology expert at Johns Hopkins University.

“Something happened to allow this organism to bubble up and cause disease. We began to look into the possibility that it could be climate change.