Spatiotemporal dynamics of multidrug resistant bacteria on intensive care unit surfaces.

ABSTRACT: Bacterial pathogens that infect patients also contaminate hospital surfaces. These contaminants impact hospital infection control and epidemiology, prompting quantitative examination of their transmission dynamics. Here we investigate spatiotemporal and phylogenetic relationships of multidrug resistant (MDR) bacteria on intensive care unit surfaces from two hospitals in the United States (US) and Pakistan collected over one year. MDR bacteria isolated from 3.3% and 86.7% of US and Pakistani surfaces, respectively, include common nosocomial pathogens, rare opportunistic pathogens, and novel taxa. Common nosocomial isolates are dominated by single lineages of different clones, are phenotypically MDR, and have high resistance gene burdens. Many resistance genes (e.g., bla_NDM, bla

SUBMITTER: D'Souza AW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6783542 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature