快猫短视频

HARMFUL bacteria, including 鈥渟uperbugs鈥� that are resistant to antibiotics,
might spread around hospitals on common fabrics used for clothes, curtains and
other hospital items. 快猫短视频s in Ohio have found that some deadly bacteria
can live on these materials for longer than three months.

All round the world there is an urgent need to stamp out the spread of
infections in hospitals. In Britain last week, the National Audit Office
published a damning report, saying that there are at least 100 000 such
infections each year in Britain, costing the National Health Service as much as
拢1 billion annually.

In the US, the situation is just as serious. The Centers for Disease Control
in Atlanta estimates that each year, 2 million people become infected in
hospital. 鈥淥f these, around 80 000 die,鈥� says a CDC spokesman.

Most hospital infections are thought to be spread through sloppy hygiene,
such as failure by doctors and nurses to wash their hands or to clean
instruments properly. The possibility that fabrics are to blame has not been
widely investigated before.

Alice Neely and Matthew Maley of the Shriners Hospital for Children in
Cincinnati, Ohio, decided to look at how easily bacteria survive on five common
hospital materials: pure cotton from clothing, cotton terry from towels, a
cotton-polyester typically used for lab coats, pure polyester used in privacy
curtains and polyethylene from splash aprons.

The researchers took 22 strains of bacteria and smeared them onto samples of
the fabrics. These strains included common 鈥渟uperbugs鈥� resistant to almost all
antibiotics, such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and
vancomycin-resistant enterococci.

It turned out that the staphylococci lived longest on polyester, surviving
for up to seven weeks, and on polyethylene, lasting anything from three weeks to
three months. The same was true of enterococci, which generally survived even
longer than the staphylococcal strains.

鈥淢ost bacteria tested in this study survived longer on polyester than on
cotton,鈥� says the team. They say bacteria could spread when staff and patients
handle polyester privacy curtains. 鈥淪taphylococci and enterococci survived for
days to months on this fabric, suggesting such drapes could act as reservoirs
for these bacteria.鈥�

Experts stress, however, that poor hand hygiene and failure to wash
instruments properly probably dwarf any transmission via fabrics. Peter Hoffman
of the Public Health Laboratory Service in London adds that cotton is the most
common fabric in British hospitals, and items are regularly heat-disinfected
before use. Where polyethylene is used鈥攊n splash aprons, for
example鈥攊t is disposed of after treating a patient, like gloves. 鈥淚t鈥檚
accepted that the most important routes are dirty hands and instruments,鈥� says
Hoffman.

Robert Weinstein of Rush Medical College in Chicago agrees that poor hand
washing is the biggest problem, but thinks the new study is interesting. 鈥淚t
should give a better understanding of the dynamics of colony persistence on
cloth,鈥� he says. It鈥檚 not surprising that vancomycin-resistant enterococci
survive for so long, he adds. 鈥淭hey are the cockroaches of the microbial world.鈥�