3 key risk factors for patient-to-patient transmission of resistant bacteria

Researchers have identified three key factors that increase the risk for patients to pass on carbapenemase-producing carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriacecae to another patient, helping explain why some contacts get the bacteria but others do not.

"The spread of CP-CRE is a major public health concern because it is extremely drug resistant; however, the research on these pathogens is very limited, and so is our knowledge of their transmission," said Vered Schechner, MD, lead author of the study published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology. "Identifying high-risk groups helps us to avoid excessive screening that can be risky and expensive, and to determine who should be screened and who might be a candidate for pre-emptive isolation or antibiotics."

Dr. Schechner and the team discovered that 96 percent of patient-to-patient transmission of CP-CRE had at least one of the following three risk factors:

  • Contact for more than three days with an infected person
  • Mechanical ventilation
  • Infection with another multidrug-resistant bacteria

They also discovered patients who take cephalosporins were less likely to acquire CP-CRE than patients who took other types of antibiotics.

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