Snitkin with Whole-Genome Sequencing pneumoniae Klebsiella Tracking a Hospital Outbreak of Carbapenem-Resistant

causes of nosocomial infections in real time. informing improvements in hospital preventive measures. If applied rapidly, such analysis can even expose the Sophisticated deployment of whole-genome sequencing revealed the weaknesses in this medical who-done-it, contamination of a ventilator that had been cleaned by thorough methods. initial transmission events. Particularly disturbing was the fact that one of the infections could be linked to two different sites on her body, rather than by independently introduced bacteria. There were at least three different cases likely originated with the index patient, from at least K. pneumoniae The authors concluded that all of the this evolutionary information with the physical tracking of the patients pointed to the most likely transmission scenario. relationships among them by comparing the variations at single nucleotides that arise as bacteria grow. Combining whole-genome sequencing on all of the bacteria that were found, determining the most likely evolutionary deadly path: The first patient did not even come into contact with any of the others. So the authors performed A careful survey of the bed locations of each patient did not shed much light on how the bacteria traveled on its finally contained by rigorous control procedures. a week to a total of 18 by the end of 2011. Six people ultimately died as a result of the bacteria. The outbreak was about 1 −− second infected patient was discovered, followed by a series of other patients with infection or colonization bacteria was seen for the month she was in the hospital. Although all seemed well, a few weeks later on August 5th, a Center on 13 June 2011. Enhanced isolation procedures were immediately implemented, and no spread of the was admitted to the NIH Clinical K. pneumoniae A patient known to be infected with a drug-resistant form of that defied standard containment methods, yielding lessons for the future. bacteria was spreading through the hospital. The results outline a complicated path of transmission within the hospital Using a combination of whole-genome sequencing and patient tracking, Snitkin and his colleagues examined how the infected 18 patients, causing the death of 6 of them. Klebsiella pneumoniae which an outbreak of drug-resistant problem. An example of this occurred in 2011 at the Clinical Center of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), in successes is the emergence of drug-resistant pathogens. And, ironically enough, hospitals are at the center of the plague, syphilis. The unfortunate result of these antibiotic-driven −− Some infections are largely a thing of the past A Detective Story