Hygiene: microbial strategies to reduce pathogens and drug resistance in clinical settings

Abstract

Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are a global concern, affecting all western hospitals, and profoundly impairing the clinical outcome of up to 15% of all hospitalized patients. Persistent microbial contamination of hospital surfaces has been suggested to contribute to HAIs onset, representing a reservoir for hospital pathogens. On the other hand, conventional chemicals-based sanitation do not prevent recontamination and can select drug-resistant strains, resulting in over 50% of surfaces persistently contaminated. There is therefore an urgent need for alternative sustainable and effective ways to control pathogens contamination and transmission. Toward this goal, we recently reported that a probiotic-based sanitation can stably decrease surface pathogens up to 90% more than conventional disinfectants, without selecting resistant species. This paper summarizes some of our most significant results.

Figure 1

Impact of the probiotic‐based microbial cleaning on microbiota contaminating hospital surfaces. A. PCHS effect on Gram‐positive (Staphylococcus spp.) and Gram‐negative (Enterobacteriaceae spp.) pathogens amounts on treated surfaces after 1, 2, 3, 4 months of PCHS continuous sanitation (T0 values are those obtained with chemical sanitation); results are expressed as median CFU counts per m². B. PCHS effect on the R genes of the whole residual microbiota (resistome) after 1–4 months of PCHS sanitation; results were obtained by PCR microarray and are expressed as of log fold change in R genes compared to the values detected at T0; mean values of the 4 months ± SD are reported.