{"id":215983,"date":"2025-06-16T02:05:29","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T07:05:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/excessive-use-of-disinfectants-in-intensive-care-patients-may-raise-risk-of-antibiotic-resistant-infections"},"modified":"2025-06-16T02:05:29","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T07:05:29","slug":"excessive-use-of-disinfectants-in-intensive-care-patients-may-raise-risk-of-antibiotic-resistant-infections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/excessive-use-of-disinfectants-in-intensive-care-patients-may-raise-risk-of-antibiotic-resistant-infections","title":{"rendered":"Excessive use of disinfectants in intensive care patients may raise risk of antibiotic-resistant infections"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/excessive-use-of-disinfectants-in-intensive-care-patients-may-raise-risk-of-antibiotic-resistant-infections.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>An international study has, for the first time, revealed a strong and direct link between the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and universal disinfection procedures applied to patients in intensive care units. Published in <i>The Lancet Microbe<\/i>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/linkinghub.elsevier.com\/retrieve\/pii\/S2666524725000461\" target=\"_blank\">study<\/a> calls for a reassessment of health care guidelines on the widespread use of disinfectants.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur research highlights the unintended consequences of universal decolonization in a global context where antibiotic resistance is an increasing threat,\u201d says Marco Oggioni, professor at the Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology at the University of Bologna and one of the study\u2019s authors. \u201cCoordinated efforts to prevent <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/antibiotic-resistant+infections\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">antibiotic-resistant infections<\/a> are crucial, but they must not prevent us from critically re-evaluating the tools we use to achieve these goals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Universal decolonization is a preventive procedure applied to patients upon admission to <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/intensive+care\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">intensive care<\/a>. The entire body is disinfected with chlorhexidine\u2014a commonly used antiseptic also employed to sanitize <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/medical+devices\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">medical devices<\/a> and hospital surfaces\u2014and an additional nasal treatment is administered with another disinfectant, mupirocin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An international study has, for the first time, revealed a strong and direct link between the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and universal disinfection procedures applied to patients in intensive care units. Published in The Lancet Microbe, the study calls for a reassessment of health care guidelines on the widespread use of disinfectants. \u201cOur research highlights [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215983\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}