Gut dwelling hospital infection linked to supermarket meats

One of the most common and troubling infections that occur in healthcare may come from an unexpected source, according to a new paper: from food. Yet because it is not one of the bacteria that we think of as disease-causing foodborne organisms, the size of the threat it poses, and the way it reaches us, may not be well understood.

The infection is Klebsiella pneumoniae, a stubborn gut-dwelling organism that can cause pneumonia, bloodstream infections and meningitis. The finding that it is present in food—and in some cases, practically genetically identical in food and in hospitals—comes from a multi-institute project that for several years has been closely analyzing pathogens found on supermarket meat and in hospital patients in Flagstaff, Ariz.

Klebsiella enters hospitals in the guts of unknowing patients, and like other pathogens that cause serious hospital-acquired infections, escapes their guts when multiple courses of antibiotics and other drugs cause diarrhea. Fine particles can contaminate the air and hard surfaces in hospital rooms, and then are transferred back to the patient, or to other patients, by hands—their own, or a health care worker’s—or by equipment. Klebsiella increasingly is also highly drug resistant, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rank the most resistant form as an “urgent” health threat requiring immediate national action.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: A Common Hospital Infection May Be Coming To Us Through Food

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