让细菌无所遁形！法国科学家利用无线设备追踪抗药菌传播途径

brine

2015年3月24日讯 /生物谷BIOON/--抗药菌一直都是让医院、乃至医药产业头疼的问题。现在，众多的生物医药公司都在研究如何才能够彻底根治这一顽疾。不过，目前看来似乎这一目标仍然是遥遥无期。既然这一方法暂时无解，能否采用另外一个思路来降低抗药菌传播的风险？最近法国的科学家就在这条路上做出了有益的尝试。
科学家使用无线设备来追踪包括261名医疗工作者和329名患者在内的受试者在医院中的活动。这些受试者佩戴的无线传感器每三十秒就会记录这些受试者的位置以及与其他受试者是否发生接触。
然后，研究人员每周从患者鼻部采集样本检测抗药型葡萄球菌的痕迹。经过四个月的跟踪调查，研究人员成功绘制出了这种抗药菌在这些患者群体间的173条传播路径。这使得人们首次能够直观的观测到抗药菌在患者之间传播的线路。
负责这项研究的科学家Thomas Obadia介绍了这项研究的意义。通过确定抗药菌在患者之间传递的路线以及不同受试者之间接触的方式，科学家将可以归纳出与抗药菌携带者接触时风险最高的途径。据此，医务工作者将可以有针对性的设计有效措施来降低抗药菌的传播途径，并进而减少抗药菌的危害。
事实上, Thomas Obadia并不是第一个吃螃蟹的人。2014年十月份，来自约翰霍普金斯大学的科学家们就曾推出一款能够快速检测抗药菌的设备，并在小鼠实验模型中证明了其有效性。
可以预见，这一思路无疑将在未来人类对抗抗药菌的斗争中发挥至关重要的作用。（生物谷Bioon.com）
详细英文报道：
As scientists develop innovative ways to reduce drug-resistant bacteria in hospitals, French researchers are using wireless electronic devices to track infections in healthcare facilities.
A team of French scientists outfitted 261 healthcare workers and 329 patients in a long-term care hospital with wireless sensors that recorded their interactions with one another every 30 seconds and ran weekly bacterial samples from subjects' noses through genetic tests to identify staph infection. During four months of tracking with the devices and testing, researchers mapped the bacteria's movement from one person to another, documenting 173 transmissions of staph between people in the study, NPRreports. A third of patients who had been free of staph when they were admitted to the hospital were colonized within a month--potentially game-changing results as clinicians try to identify the infection early on and prevent its spread.
The group published their findings Thursday in PLOS Computational Biology.
"Bottom line is, monitoring contact networks is easy," Thomas Obadia, lead author of the research paper, told NPR in an email. "Recorded signals are indeed correlated with transmission, so such data should be used to design targeted control measures, in hospital or [a long-term care facility]."
Obadia said applying the data in real life "is still a work in progress," but next up the group will identify contact patterns that put individuals at greater risk of getting colonized or at higher risk for developing a staph infection later. A third of people carry staph infections in their noses, NPR reports, so the group's sensor-monitoring method could have broader applications down the road.
Meanwhile, other research outfits are developing ways to quickly diagnose and monitor antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. In October 2014, scientists at Johns Hopkins revealed a real-time tracking system that can rapidly identify specific types of drug-resistant bacteria and provide feedback on how the bacteria respond to antibiotics. Although researchers conducted the research in mice, the results could easily be applied to humans in the future because the system uses readily available imaging tools to detect bacterial infections.

无灾是福

有这个想法的人真不简单！数据的处理估计是需要专门的软件呵！我们国家就是缺少这种应用型的研究啊！

小白天使

真厉害！！！人类太智慧了！谢谢老师分享！！！