An Epidemic of Resistant Salmonella in a Nursery
Animal-to-Human Spread
- Robert W. Lyons, MD;
- Cathryn L. Samples, MD;
- Hema N. DeSilva, MD;
- Kathryn A. Ross, RN;
- Ernest M. Julian, RS;
- Patricia J. Checko, SM
- From the Department of Infectious Disease and Epidemiology (Dr Lyons) and Section on Neonatology (Dr DeSilva), St Francis Hospital (Ms Ross), Hartford, Conn; University of Connecticut, Storrs (Drs Lyons and DeSilva); Yale University, New Haven, Conn (Dr Lyons); and Field Services Division, Center for Disease Control, US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (Dr Samples), Connecticut Department of Health (Mr Julian and Ms Checko), Hartford, Conn.
Abstract
A Salmonella heidelberg epidemic in a hospital nursery was traced to infected calves on a dairy farm where the mother of the index patient lived. The Salmonella isolates from all cases were resistant to chloramphenicol, sulfamethoxazole, and tetracycline. Verification of the spread of infection from the farm animals to a hospital population is unusual and raises questions about the hazards of antibiotic animal-feed preparations that may induce infection with resistant organisms in humans.
(JAMA 243:546-547, 1980)
Footnotes
-
Reprint requests to St Francis Hospital and Medical Center, 114 Woodland St, Hartford, CT 06105 (Dr Lyons).
