Nosocomial infections and their control strategies

Abstract

A B S T R A C TNosocomial infections are also known as hospital-acquired/associated infections. National Healthcare Safety Network along with Centers for Disease Control for surveillance has classified nosocomial infection sites into 13 types with 50 infection sites, which are specific on the basis of biological and clinical criteria. The agents that are usually involved in hospital-acquired infections include Streptococcus spp., Acinetobacter spp., enterococci, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, coagulase-negative staphylococci, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus, Legionella and Enterobacteriaceae family members, namely, Proteus mirablis, Klebsiella pneumonia, Escherichia coli, Serratia marcescens. Nosocomial pathogens can be transmitted through person to person, environment or contaminated water and food, infected individuals, contaminated healthcare personnel's skin or contact via shared items and surfaces. Mainly, multi-drug-resistant nosocomial organisms include methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, vancomycin-resistant enterococci, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Klebsiella pneumonia, whereas Clostridium difficile shows natural resistance. Excessive and improper use of broad-spectrum antibiotics, especially in healthcare settings, is elevating nosocomial infections, which not only becomes a big health care problem but also causes great economic and production loss in the community. Nosocomial infections can be controlled by measuring and comparing the infection rates within healthcare settings and sticking to the best healthcare practices. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides the methodology for surveillance of nosocomial infections along with investigation of major outbreaks. By means of this surveillance, hospitals can devise a strategy comprising of infection control practices.

Isolation, Molecular Identification and Antibiotic Resistance of Enterococcus faecalis from Diseased Tilapia

“…Enterococcus sp. has emerged as important healthcare associated pathogen (Arias and Murray, 2012;Khan et al, 2015), as they are intrinsically resistant and tolerant to numerous commercial antibiotics and are able to acquire drug resistance either by chromosome, transfer of plasmid or transposing acquisition containing genetic sequences that confer resistance in other bacteria (Eaton and Gasson, 2001;Ben Belgacem et al, 2010;Hammerum Lester and Heuer, 2010). In the last decade, several virulence factors have been described in Enterococci including cytolysins (Vankerckhoven et al, 2004), gelatinase (Mannu et al, 2003), serine protease (Mohamed et al 2004), hyaluronidase, aggregation substance (Muscholl-silberhorn et al, 2000) and extracellular surface protein (Shankar et al, 1999).…”

Prevalence of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus in selected seafood markets and aquaculture farms in Kerala, south-west coast of India

“…The prevalence of methicillin resistant strains of staphylococci in fish indicates high risk associated with fish handlers and fish farmers. Staphylococcus aureus, a well known pathogen of hospital acquired infection and food poisoning (Khan et al, 2015), is a commensal organism of skin and mucous membrane of different species of animals as well as human beings and is not generally considered as the normal microflora of fish (Huss, 1988; Mc Carthy et al, 2012). Remarkably, 20% of individuals are persistently and 30% are transiently colonised with S. aureus in the nose (Liu, 2009).…”

Detection of Exotoxins and Antimicrobial Susceptibility Pattern in Clinical Pseudomonas Aeruginosa Isolates

“…Among the all pathogenic bacteria, P. aeruginosa contributes to 11% of all nosocomial infections (17). The clinical P. aeruginosa isolates that secret type III proteins (ExoU and ExoS) show more antimicrobial resistance and associate with increase rates of mortality and morbidity (3).…”