Superbug becoming tolerant to hospital hand sanitisers

♦ Hospital hand sanitisers are becoming increasingly ineffective against a notorious superbug, which is becoming immune to alcohol-based disinfectants, research has shown.

Scientists in Australia made the discovery after testing bacterial samples collected over 19 years.

They found evidence that the superbug vancomycinresistant enterococcus (VRE) is growing increasingly immune to sanitisers. VRE infections are some of the most difficult to treat because the bacteria are resistant to many classes of antibiotic, including the “last resort” drug vancomycin.

To combat dangerous microbes, hospitals have adopted strict hand-hygiene involving ethyl or isopropyl alcohol disinfectants.

But when scientists screened samples from two hospitals between 1997 and 2015, those obtained after 2009 were found to be more tolerant to the disinfectant.

The study was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.