Hospital Water Systems May Play Role in Antibiotic Resistance

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Hospital Water Systems May Play Role in Antibiotic Resistance

Hospital wastewater systems may play a role in antibiotic resistance, a new study suggests.

U.S. National Institutes of Health researchers collected samples from pipes beneath a hospital's intensive care unit and from manholes covering sewers draining hospital wastewater.

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Representative image, source: Wikimedia Commons

Most of the samples tested positive for bacterial plasmids, or ring-shaped pieces of DNA, that can make bacteria resistant to carbapenems, which are "last-resort" antibiotics given to patients who develop multidrug-resistant infections.

The findings add to growing evidence that hospital wastewater systems are a significant reservoir for plasmids that can make bacteria resistant to antibiotics, according to the researchers.

Some experts believe these plasmids thrive in hospital wastewater systems due to regular use of strong antibiotics in hospitals.

The researchers also tested hospital sinks and other high-touch areas -- such as countertops, door knobs and computers -- for carbapenem-resistant organisms, but found little evidence of them. Of the 217 high-touch surface samples, only three (1.4 percent) tested positive for carbapenem-resistant organisms.

And only 11 of 340 samples collected from drains were positive (3.2 percent), the findings showed.

These findings suggest that efforts to control antibiotic-resistant organisms on hospital surfaces are successful in reducing the risk of patient infections, study co-leader and microbiologist Karen Frank said in a news release from the American Society for Microbiology.

Read full article: UPI  

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