WASHINGTON Over six frightening months, a deadly germ untreatable by most antibiotics spread in the nations leading research hospital. Pretty soon, a patient a week was catching the bug. Scientists at the National Institutes of Health locked down patients, cleaned with bleach, even ripped out plumbing and still the germ persisted.
By the end, 18 people harbored the dangerous germ, and six died of bloodstream infections from it. Another five made it through the outbreak only to die from the diseases that brought them to NIHs world-famous campus in the first place.
It took gene detectives teasing apart the bacterias DNA to solve the germs wily spread, a CSI-like saga with lessons for hospitals everywhere as they struggle to contain the growing threat of superbugs.
It all stemmed from a single patient carrying a fairly new superbug known as KPC Klebsiella pneumoniae that resists treatment by one of the last lines of defense, antibiotics called carbapenems.
We never want this to happen again, said Dr. Tara Palmore, deputy hospital epidemiologist at the NIH Clinical Center.
Infections at health care facilities are one of the nations leading causes of preventable death, claiming an estimated 99,000 lives a year. Theyre something of a silent killer, as hospitals fearful of lawsuits dont like to publicly reveal when they outfox infection control yet no hospital is immune.
Wednesday, government researchers published an unusually candid account of last years outbreak, with some advice: Fast sequencing of a germs genome, its full DNA, may be essential. It can reveal how drug-resistant bacteria are spreading so that doctors can protect other patients.
This is not an easy story to tell, said Dr. Julie Segre, a senior investigator at NIHs National Human Genome Research Institute. She led the genetic sleuthing that found the bug hiding in sink drains and, most chilling, even in a ventilator that had been cleaned with bleach.
Infection-control specialists at other hospitals called this detailed anatomy of an outbreak, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, important to share.
They were able to demonstrate that this sneaky little bug was able to stay alive and get transmitted in ways they hadnt quite predicted before they had the detailed genetic information, said Dr. Sara Cosgrove, associate hospital epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University. Its very revealing.
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Genetic sleuths track down deadly superbug