The Fecal Microbiome and Risk for Acquiring Drug-Resistant Organisms

The resident human microbiome in the gastrointestinal tract may play an important role in preventing colonization by multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs). Hypothesizing that hospitalized patients might have reduced microbial diversity compared with healthy controls and that particular microbial signatures could identify patients at high risk for MDRO acquisition, researchers at a single medical center compared fecal microbiota among healthy and hospitalized patients.

Forty-four hospitalized patients completed the study. They were divided into four groups: (1) no antibiotic exposure during the hospitalization; (2) antibiotic-exposed, and colonized with MDROs at follow-up; (3) antibiotic-exposed, and colonized with MDROs at baseline; and (4) …