Investigate Klebsiella Mystery

BY BEN PORTER (NINDS) AND LAURA STEPHENSON CARTER

In the summer of 2011, a strain of Klebsiella pneumoniae that was resistant to the powerful antibiotic carbapenem began working its way through some of the NIH Clinical Center's most gravely ill patients. Even infection-control procedures failed to stop the spread before seven patients died. So the Clinical Center (CC) did what no ordinary hospital could. It marshaled the forces of NIH’s intramural program: Intramural Sequencing Center scientists and technicians, CC microbiologists and epidemiologists, and National Human Genome Research Institute researchers pitched in to help.

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