Antimicrobial Drug Resistance

Health care-associated infections, or HAIs, related to the use of medical devices are more likely to be antibiotic resistant than those resulting from surgical procedures, with antimicrobial nonsusceptibility more common among adults than children, according to data from the CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network.

Infectious Disease News attended the World Anti-Microbial Resistance Congress in Washington, D.C., and asked Cornelius (Neil) J. Clancy, MD, associate professor of medicine and director of the extensively drug-resistant pathogen lab and mycology program at the University of Pittsburgh, what he saw and heard during the meeting.

The ability of antibiotic stewardship programs to control and reduce the unnecessary use of antibiotics could be improved by addressing several research gaps, according to a Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America white paper published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.

WASHINGTON — Multidrug-resistant Salmonella was detected twice as often in samples of meat from conventionally-raised chicken and turkeys compared with antibiotic-free or organic poultry, according to findings from a study conducted in Pennsylvania.

WASHINGTON — In this video, Manos Perros, PhD, president and CEO of Entasis Therapeutics, summarizes a panel discussion about how prescribing habits for new antibiotics impact the antimicrobial market.

An NIH-funded study published in Nature Microbiology further highlighted the dangers of prolonged antibiotic use during infancy. Researchers found that infants who were heavily treated with antibiotics had reduced gut microbiota diversity and increased resistance genes to several antimicrobial agents.

Children who underwent fecal microbiota transplant, or FMT, experienced a significant reduction in recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection, or CDI, and a decrease in the prevalence of antimicrobial resistance genes in their gut microbiota, according to findings published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases.

At one Israeli hospital, screening readmitted patients with prior positive clinical cultures for carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, or CRAB, showed that CRAB colonization was persistent for up to 285 days.

Findings from a systematic review and meta-analysis showed that more than 16% of patients who acquired antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, or ARB, did not have any antimicrobial exposure, researchers reported.