Bacterium Resistant to Antibiotic Kills Another Hospital Patient

New York scientists have reported the fourth instance of a hospitalized patient developing an infection with a strain of Staphylococcus aureus resistant to vancomycin--the antibiotic of last resort for bacteria that have developed resistance to all others. Vancomycin-resistant strains of bacteria could produce deadly epidemics if they escaped from the confines of a hospital.

A team from Rockefeller University reports in today’s New England Journal of Medicine that a 79-year-old patient in a New York hospital died last spring as the result of a bloodstream infection produced by the bacterium.

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Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II