Study shows some hospital bacteria growing ‘tolerant’ to hand sanitizers

TAMPA — Some hospital superbugs are growing increasingly tolerant to alcohol-based disinfectants found in hand washes and sanitizers, allowing increasing infections to take hold, an Australian study warned on Wednesday.

Hand rubs and washes that contain disinfectants based on isopropyl or ethyl alcohol are widely used around the world, and have cut down dramatically on one type of superbug, called methicillin- resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

But researchers have noticed a rise in another kind of bacteria that lives in the gut, Enterococcus faecium, and can be spread via catheters, ventilators or central lines in a health care setting.

“Drug- resistant E. faecium infections have increased despite the use of alcohol disinfectants, and currently represent a leading cause of infections acquired in hospitals,” said the report in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Enterococci account for about one in 10 cases of hospitalacquired bacterial infections around the world, and are the fourth and fifth leading cause of sepsis in North America and Europe, respectively, according to background information in the article.

To better understand the reasons for this bacteria’s spread, researchers analyzed bacterial samples taken from two hospitals in Melbourne, Australia from 1997 to 2015.

“The isolates gathered after 2009 were on average more tolerant to the alcohol compared to bacteria taken from before 2004,” said the report.

Being “tolerant” means the bacteria can survive exposure to alcohol longer.

But study author Tim Stinear, a microbiologist at the Doherty Institute for Immunity and Infection at the University of Melbourne, said in an e- mail: “Our findings do not signal the end of hand sanitizers, but indicate you cannot rely solely on alcoholbased disinfectants to control E. faecium in the hospital/ healthcare setting.” —