A gene that strips away one of the last reliable classes of antibiotics is no longer a rarity imported from overseas. It is showing up in more American hospitals, and new wastewater data suggest it is also circulating in some communities outside of them.
Federal laboratory surveillance found that infections caused by carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales carrying the New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase gene, known as NDM, rose 461% between 2019 and 2023, according to a CDC report published in Annals of Internal Medicine and detailed by CIDRAP.
