Patients bring highly resistant intestinal germs to the clinic

Every 8th patient brings multidrug-resistant ESBL germs to the clinic

According to health experts, up to 15,000 people die each year from hospital infections in Germany. Some estimates even estimate as many as 30,000 dead. Scientists have now been able to show that many patients already bring highly resistant germs when they are admitted to the clinic.

Dangerous hospital infections

Health experts have been pointing out for years that better infection protection is needed in German hospitals to better prevent hospital infections. However, the problem is not only that in many facilities important hygiene rules are not met. A new study has shown that many newly admitted patients bring multi-drug-resistant germs to the clinic.

Hospital infections have been a serious problem for years. One study has now shown that every eighth new patient admitted to a clinic already carries so-called ESBL germs. (Image: Alexander Raths / fotolia.com)

Newly admitted patients bring with them ESBL germs

Scientists at the InfectoGnostics Forschungscampus Jena have now been able to prove in an observational study that every eighth new patient admitted to a clinic already carries so-called ESBL germs.

According to a communication, infections with its own ESBL pathogens were still an exception in the study, however, the researchers showed that the pathogens could pass on their resistance genes to other bacterial strains in the clinic.

InfectoGnostics scientists from the University of Jena, the industrial partner Abbott and the Leibniz Institute for Photonic Technologies were involved in the clinical study. The results were published in the journal "PLOS One".

Resistant to many antibiotics

"Extended Beta-Lactamase (ESBL) or extended-spectrum beta-lactamase enzymes can cleave the beta-lactamase rings of a major drug class of antibiotics with an enzyme, rendering them ineffective," explains Techniker Krankenkasse on their website.

"Most commonly, these enzymes occur in typical intestinal bacteria such as Escherichia coli and Klebsiella," said the TK.

According to experts, multidrug-resistant intestinal bacteria are often transmitted through the hands, which is why consistent hand hygiene can save lives.

In immune deficiencies, the germs can lead to infection

As the University of Jena writes in a communication, ESBL for bacteria act as a life insurance: Once the bacterium is able to form such an enzyme, it can successfully defend against numerous antibiotics used in clinics and also the family doctor Use come.

The consequence: For several years doctors have had to resort to reserve antibiotics more and more often in order to be able to handle infections at all. This cycle means that many antibiotics are already ineffective.

ESBL-producing bacteria do not spread mainly in hospitals, but colonize the healthy intestine mainly through food intake.

Colonization itself is not dangerous as long as those affected are healthy. In severe surgery or in immunodeficiency, however, the germs can lead to infections.

In the current study, the colonization rate of patients who are newly hospitalized and evaluated as to whether they are rising through the hospital stay was investigated.

In addition, the researchers analyzed which factors caused the colonization with the pathogen.

Only one patient became infected with his own pathogen

For the study, 1,334 patients were tested for ESBL-forming intestinal microbes: first at hospital admission, then after treatment and, if possible, six months after hospitalization.

The results showed how widespread ESBL-producing bacteria are today in the population: for every eighth of the patients tested (12.7 percent) an ESBL germ could be detected upon admission to the clinic.

However, the situation is even more dramatic in patients from nursing homes: Almost one in four patients (23.8 percent) already carries the multidrug-resistant germs here.

Despite this high colonization rate with ESBL agents, actual infections with the 'own' ESBL germ during hospitalization were extremely rare: in the study, only a single patient was infected with their own pathogen.

No reason to be all-clear

The low number of infections in the clinic, however, is no reason for the all-clear, as Dr. Oliwia Makarewicz of the Institute for Infection Medicine and Hospital Hygiene of the University of Jena explains:

"On the one hand, the number of actual infections in departments such as oncology, geriatrics or the intensive care unit is much higher, because it mainly treat patients at risk with a weakened immune system," said the scientist.

"On the other hand, we were able to show once again in our analyzes that the genetic information for multidrug-resistance via plasmids is also transferred to other types of bacteria in the intestine - new multidrug-resistant pathogens can thus develop very quickly," explains Dr. med. Makarewicz.

"One has to assume that such colonization germs can pass on the resistance to hospital germs. The role of these small strands of DNA in the transmission of resistance is far too little considered in everyday clinical practice. "(Ad)