Kelly Eick, a graduate student in Qingyun Liu’s Lab, published a new study in JAMA Network Open investigating a health care–associated Mycobacterium abscessus outbreak.
This multidisciplinary effort brought together hospital epidemiology, clinical infectious disease, clinical microbiology, and population genomics: Dr. Emily Sickbert-Bennett’s team led the epidemiologic investigation and environmental sampling, Dr. Anne Friedland led the clinical investigation, Dr. Melissa Miller’s team collected and curated the clinical isolates, and Dr. Qingyun Liu’s team performed the population genomic analyses and integrated the clinical, epidemiologic, and environmental data. Together, the team analyzed M. abscessus isolates from transplant and other high-risk surgical patients alongside isolates recovered from associated hospital environments. They found that patient infections clustered by hospital unit and were genetically linked to local tap-water or sink-associated environmental isolates. Because patients within these clusters did not overlap temporally, the findings support persistent, unit-specific water reservoirs as the likely infection source rather than direct patient-to-patient transmission. Importantly, by analyzing historical isolates collected from the same hospital nearly two decades earlier, the team found evidence that dominant circulating clone 7, or DCC7, has persisted in the local environment for more than 20 years. This work highlights the value of integrating genomic epidemiology with infection-prevention investigations and underscores the importance of water-management strategies to reduce infection risk for vulnerable patient populations. The journal also published an invited commentary with the paper, titled “Mycobacterium abscessus and the Built Environment—A Preventable Source of Infections”.