Alcohol loses its luster

Alcohol-based disinfectants are a key way to control hospital infections worldwide. Pidot et al. now show that the multidrug-resistant bacterium Enterococcus faecium has become increasingly tolerant to the alcohols in widely used hospital disinfectants such as hand rub solutions. These findings may help explain the recent increase in this pathogen in hospital settings. A global response to E. faecium will need to include consideration of its adaptive responses not only to antibiotics but also to alcohols and the other active agents in disinfectant solutions that have become so critical for effective infection control.

Read the Link at https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/10/452/eaar6115