home Infectious Diseases, Water Systems “Bacteria found in infants has also been found in pipes of Maryland hospital”

“Bacteria found in infants has also been found in pipes of Maryland hospital”

Pseudomonas aeruginosa (public domain, CDC PHIL)
Pseudomonas aeruginosa (public domain, CDC PHIL)

Just a short post about a news story recently where they have traced Pseudomonas found in NICU infants to the pipes in the building.  It’s still in the early stages of the investigation… but it makes me wonder why routine surveillance isn’t more common.  I feel like we often hear stories about finding Legionella, Pseudomonas, or Klebsiella in a hospital, after there’s been an outbreak or some other issue.  While I’m sure the cost of routine surveillance is significant, it’s probably cheaper than fighting infections and doing after-the-fact investigations?  Perhaps advances in rapid, sequence-based diagnostics will change this.

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David Coil

David Coil is a Project Scientist in the lab of Jonathan Eisen at UC Davis. David works at the intersection between research, education, and outreach in the areas of the microbiology of the built environment, microbial ecology, and bacterial genomics. Twitter

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