Loading...
Alcohol-based hand rubs are now a worldwide standard for hand hygiene, and alcohol prep pads are equally ubiquitous for quick disinfection of hospital equipment. Australian investigators recently noted that while the incidence of infection due to other bacterial pathogens had been decreasing in their country, the incidence of Enterococcus faecium infections had risen.
To determine if hospital-associated strains of this pathogen were becoming resistant to alcohol disinfection, the researchers screened 139 E. faecium clinical isolates collected from two hospitals during a 19-year period. They found that strains from 2010 to 2015 were significantly more tolerant to exposure to 23% isopropanol than strains collected prior to 2009, with an almost…