Infection with Klebsiella pneumoniae is a serious danger to
older hospitalized patients, with an estimated mortality rate as
high as 40 percent. It has generally been treated with broad-
spectrum cephalosporin antibiotics. Another class of
antibiotics, carbapenems, is used as an antibiotic of last
resort for the most persistent infections. But now carbapenem-
resistant Klebsiella strains, or CRKP, are appearing across the
nation, even outside of health care facilities. A study in the
March issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology
reports that the proportion of Klebsiella cases resistant to
cephalosporins increased to 11.6 percent in 2010 from 5.3
percent in 1999. The proportion resistant to carbapenems
increased to 4.5 percent in 2010 from less than 0.1 percent in
2002. The senior author, Ramanan Laxminarayan, a researcher at
the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy in
Washington, D.C., compared the problem to that of methicillin-
resistant Staphylococcus aureus. “There’s a similarity to