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Tag: CRE

  • Nightmare Bacteria Becoming a Larger Problem, Warns CDC

    The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) this week warned that carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) are becoming more common. The bacteria can cause potentially deadly infections, but are also highly resistant to antibiotics, making the infections difficult to treat.

    Though the germs are a normal part of the human digestive system, some of them have evolved the ability to resist antibiotics. If these resistant CRE enter the blood or other areas of the body they can cause severe infections that kill up to half of patients who become infected. The bacteria can also pass their antibiotic-resistance to other germs, making other types of infections hard to treat.

    The CDC’s latest Vital Signs report shows that CRE are becoming more common in medical facilities, and one specific type has been found in 42 states. Though healthy people aren’t normally infected with CRE, patients on ventilators, patients with catheters, or those on long courses of antibiotics are at risk. Though The infections are still relatively uncommon, but CDC is calling on medical facilities and doctors to improve the way they prescribe antibiotics.

    Just last month a new study found that patients with CRE could take over one year to be rid of the bacteria, even after their infections have ended. This raises the possibility that patients positive for CRE could become re-infected or infect others.

    CRE infection graphic

  • CRE Superbug Patients Could Remain Infected For Over One Year

    A new study has shown that patients infected with carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) could take over one year to be rid of CRE bacteria.

    CRE, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are potentially deadly infections that are highly resistant to antibiotics, making them difficult to treat. Though the bacteria is not normally found in healthy people, patients on ventilators, patients with catheters, or those on long courses of antibiotics are at risk for infection.

    The study, published in the American Journal of Infection Control, looked at 97 CRE-positive patients who were discharged from the Shaare Zedek medical Center from 2009 to 2010. It showed that patients who tested positive for CRE took an average of 387 days to clear the infection. Even after one year, 39% of the patients remained “positive” for CRE, meaning they could become re-infected or transmit the infection to other people.

    “Patients with multiple hospitalizations or those who were diagnosed with clinical CRE disease should be assumed to have a more extended duration of CRE coverage and should therefore be admitted under conditions of isolation and cohorting until proven to be CRE-negative,” said the study’s authors. “These measures will reduce the hospitalization of CRE-positive patients among the general patient population, potentially preventing the spread of CRE.”

    The study was also able to identify several risk factors that were related to long periods of infection, including long hospital stays, re-hospitalizations, and whether patients had an active infection or a “colonization” without symptoms.