Contagious Conversations: The Eye of the Storm
In 2022, an outbreak of a deadly drug-resistant bacteria began spreading across several U.S. states. An investigation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed an unusual culprit: eye drops. In the latest episode of our Contagious Conversations podcast, we explore this recent outbreak and CDC's role in the investigation.
I was joined for this episode by Danielle Rankin, PhD, MPH, an epidemiologist for the antimicrobial resistance team in the Division of Healthcare Quality and Promotion at CDC. Prior to her work at CDC, Dr. Rankin was an epidemiologist for the Florida Department of Health Healthcare Associated Infections Program. Having investigated more than 60 domestic infectious disease outbreaks, it was fascinating to hear Dr. Rankin detail the evolution of this outbreak, and how CDC was able to identify the source of these infections, which to date has impacted 81 people in 18 states and caused four deaths.
The source of the infections was a drug-resistant strain of bacteria called pseudomonas aeruginosa, which previously had been seen in healthcare settings like hospitals, where it can spread from person-to-person if there are gaps in infection prevention measures. But when an early cluster of infections occurred not in a hospital, but at an ophthalmology clinic, investigators turned to a process called genome sequencing to home in on the source of the infections.
“The fact that the bacteria was identified in different settings led us to working closely with the healthcare associated infections/antimicrobial resistance programs to better understand the different exposure data we had for this investigation,” Dr. Rankin said. “And so once we had this information, we were able to really focus on the methods to specifically identify common products, and in this case, the eyedrops, across healthcare facility clusters and sporadic cases.”
I encourage everyone to tune in and learn more about this fascinating outbreak investigation, and how CDC was able to work with federal, state and local partners to meet this public health challenge.
