Infection Control and Hospital Epidermiology - a medical Journal - posted a study on their website this week warning about a drug-resistant bug that may put Hospital patients at risk.
The intruder - known as Acinetobacter - causes serious ailments such as pneumonia and bloodstream infections to flourish (and over time has managed to become resistant to a bevy of drugs normally used to treat it).
For example, there has been a 300 % increase in resistance to a last resort drug, known by the name of imipenem.
The data was collection from over three-hundred hospitals during a seven-year period (1999-2006).
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which financed the study, theorized that only tighter infection-control meausres and new antibiotics could halt the resistance - and ultimately - the disease itself.
In another study earlier this year, Robert A. Bonomo - an M.D. at the Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veteran Affairs Medical Center - noted that DNA study may be the key.
"By screening for particular DNA sequences associated with resistance to specific antibiotics, physicians might be able to understand why resistance emerges so quickly and prescribe more effective antibiotics that will be better suited for treating an infection,"
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