A new study reports a surge in drug-resistant strains of a dangerous type of bacteria in U.S. hospitals: Acinetobacter strikes patients in Intensive Care Units and others and often causes severe pneumonias or bloodstream infection, some of which are now resistant to imipenem, an antibiotic that is reserved for last-line treatment.
The study is the work of researchers at the Extending the Cure project, led by Dr. Ramanan Laxminarayan, of the Washington, D.C.-based think-tank Resources for the Future, and appears as an electronically published paper in the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.
As well as affecting ICU and other patients, Acinetobacter infections are arising in soldiers returning from the war in Iraq.
