Infection control in hospitals may be the key to stopping the spread of antibiotic resistant strains of Klebsiella pneumonia, researchers said last night.
The conclusions come from the first European genetic survey of its kind tracking antibiotic resistance in a single organism.
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK, sequenced the genomes of 1,700 samples taken from 244 hospitals across the continent.
This enabled researchers to build a picture, reported in Nature Microbiology, of the spread of carbapenem-resistant strains. They warn of the emergence of deadly clones which carry one or more genes for enzymes called carbapenemases, which nullify the antibiotics.
The researchers say their findings suggest that the heavy use of antibiotics in hospitals favours the spread of highly-resistant bacteria.
The researchers have now formed a Centre for Genomic Pathogen Surveillance and their next target is the Enterobacteriaceae bacteria.
Researcher Dr Sophia David said: “In the case of carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae, our findings imply hospitals are the key facilitator of transmission – over half of the samples carrying a carbapenemase gene were closely related to others collected from the same hospital, suggesting that the bacteria are spreading from person-to-person primarily within hospitals.”
Professor Hajo Grundmann, of the University of Freiburg, another participant in the research, said: “We are optimistic that with good hospital hygiene, which includes early identification and isolation of patients carrying these bacteria, we can not only delay the spread of these pathogens, but also successfully control them.
“This research emphasises the importance of infection control and ongoing genomic surveillance of antibiotic-resistant bacteria to ensure we detect new resistant strains early and act to combat the spread of antibiotic resistance.”
Nature Microbiology 29 July 2019
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