Superbug Outbreak May Have Been Caused by Dirty Endoscopes

A drug-resistant superbug outbreak in Illinois last year may have a result of dirty endoscopes, NBC News Health finds.

Contaminated exam tools have been blamed for the alarming outbreak, government health officials confirmed. Endoscopes that use cameras attached to long tubes to snake through the gut, examining the liver, bile duct and pancreas, were not properly disinfected. Thus, it resulted to infecting patients with a dangerous type of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), a family of germs highly resistant to all types of antibiotics.

The outbreak were considered rare New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM), CRE cases, which produce enzyme that renders most antibiotics useless, officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed. When this happens, the bacteria may be impossible to treat and may therefore result to life threatening infections. A team from the CDC looked at nine cases of NDM CRE in the northeastern part of Illinois that took place between March to July. Eight cases were reported to have happened at a single hospital.

Health officials are worried that the outbreak may have gone up since 2009, when they were first reported in the United States. From 2009 to 2012, 27 patients with NDM-producing CRB were confirmed by the CDC. Last year, there were 69 reported cases, including 44 from northeastern Illinois alone, said Dr. Alex Kallen, a CDC outbreak expert. "It was a bit of a surprise." Even more surprising was the fact that the germs were eventually traced to patients who has a history of endoscopic liver and pancreas exams known as ERCPs.

As it turns out, the endoscopes used for the procedure which had undergone high-level disinfection, still tested positive for NDM CRE and another bad bug that is also highly resistant to all types of antibiotics.