Identifying more epidemic clones during a hospital outbreak of multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii.

ABSTRACT: Infections caused by multidrug-resistant bacteria are a major concern in hospitals. Current infection-control practices legitimately focus on hygiene and appropriate use of antibiotics. However, little is known about the intrinsic abilities of some bacterial strains to cause outbreaks. They can be measured at a population level by the pathogen's transmission rate, i.e. the rate at which the pathogen is transmitted from colonized hosts to susceptible hosts, or its reproduction number, counting the number of secondary cases per infected/colonized host. We collected data covering a 20-month surveillance period for carriage of multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (MDRAB) in a surgery ward. All isolates were subjected to molecular fingerprinting, and a cluster analysis of profiles was pe

SUBMITTER: Domenech de Celles M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3459964 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature