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By Rebecca Cox
By Mary Elizabeth Dallas
HealthDay ReporterWEDNESDAY, May 22 (HealthDay News) -- Man's best friend may bring millions more microscopic pals into the average human home, a new study suggests.
Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Colorado found that homes with dogs have more bacteria than other homes, including germs rarely found in households without dogs.
"We can tell whether you own a dog based on the bacteria we find on your television screen or pillowcase," study co-author Rob Dunn, associate professor of biology at NC State, said in a university news release.
The researchers involved 40 homes. Dunn and his colleagues wiped nine of the common surfaces in these residences -- TV screens, kitchen counters, toilet seats, refrigerators, pillowcases and door handles -- with sterile swabs to determine the types and amount of bacteria present.
The researchers found more than 7,700 types of bacteria in the homes, with unique groupings of bacteria depending on the location tested. For instance, bacteria found in refrigerators, on kitchen counters and on cutting boards were usually similar since they all related to food. The bacteria on doorknobs, pillowcases and toilet seats were also similar, but came more often from humans.
"We leave a microbial 'fingerprint' on everything we touch," Dunn explained. "Sometimes those microbes come from our skin, sometimes they're oral bacteria and as often as not they're human fecal bacteria."
But what about differences between houses? "The biggest difference we've found so far is whether you own a dog," Dunn said. "For example, there are bacteria normally found in soil that are 700 times more common in dog-owning households than in those without dogs."
The study showed bacteria in homes can be grouped into three "habitats" or categories: places people touch, places touched by food and places that collect dust. The researchers pointed out the bacteria found on pillowcases in two different homes is likely more similar than bacteria found in the same home but in another "habitat."
"This makes sense," Dunn added. "Humans have been living in houses for thousands of years, which is sufficient time for organisms to adapt to living in particular parts of houses. We know, for example, that there is a species that only lives in hot-water heaters. We deposit these bacterial hitchhikers in different ways in different places, and they thrive or fail depending on their adaptations."
The study was published May 22 in the journal PLOS ONE. The researchers plan to conduct a larger study involving another 40 homes as well as samples from a national survey of 1,300 homes across the country.
"The larger sample size will help us better understand the range of variables that influence these microbial ecosystems," Dunn said. "Does it matter if you have kids or live in an apartment? We expect the microbial populations of homes in deserts to be different from the populations of homes in Manhattan, but no one knows if that's true. We want to find out."
By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, March 5 (HealthDay News) -- A "nightmare" bacteria that is resistant to powerful antibiotics and kills half of those it infects has surfaced in nearly 200 U.S. hospitals and nursing homes, federal health officials reported Tuesday.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 4 percent of U.S. hospitals and 18 percent of nursing homes had treated at least one patient with the bacteria, called Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), within the first six months of 2012.
"CRE are nightmare bacteria. Our strongest antibiotics don't work and patients are left with potentially untreatable infections," CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said in a news release. "Doctors, hospital leaders and public health [officials] must work together now to implement the CDC's 'detect and protect' strategy and stop these infections from spreading."
"The good news," Frieden added at an afternoon teleconference, "is we now have an opportunity to prevent its further spread." But, he continued, "We only have a limited window of opportunity to stop this infection from spreading to the community and spreading to more organisms."
CRE are in a family of more than 70 bacteria called enterobacteriaceae, including Klebsiella pneumoniae and E. coli, that normally live in the digestive system.
In recent years, some of these bacteria have become resistant to last-resort antibiotics known as carbapenems.
Although CRE bacteria are not yet found nationwide, they have increased fourfold within the United States in the past decade, with most cases reported in the Northeast.
Health officials said they're concerned about the rapid spread of the bacteria, which can endanger the lives of patients and healthy people. For example, in the last 10 years, the CDC tracked one CRE from one health-care facility to similar facilities in 42 states.
One type of CRE, a resistant form of Klebsiella pneumoniae, has increased sevenfold in the past decade, according to the CDC's March 5 Vital Signs report.
"To see bacteria that are resistant is worrisome, because this group of bacteria are very common," said Dr. Marc Siegel, clinical associate professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City.
Most CRE infections to date have been in patients who had prolonged stays in hospitals, long-term facilities and nursing homes, the report said.
The bacteria kill up to half the patients whose bloodstream gets infected and are easily spread from patient to patient on the hands of health-care workers, the CDC said.
Moreover, CRE bacteria can transfer their antibiotic resistance to other bacteria of the same type.
This problem is the result of the overuse of antibiotics, Siegel said. "The more you use an antibiotic, the more resistance is going to emerge," he said. "This is an indictment of the overuse of this class of antibiotic."
