Federal laboratory scientists have identified a bacterial sample from a Massachusetts patient carrying a resistance gene rarely seen outside one specific group of bacteria, and the finding is notable less for how sick the patient was than for how easily it could have gone undetected. The detection was made through the CDC's Antimicrobial Resistance Laboratory Network and reported in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
The bacterium was Proteus mirabilis, a common cause of urinary tract infections. It came from a urine culture collected in May 2024 from a patient receiving outpatient care and carried the gene blaOXA-23.
