The Epidemiology and Control of VRE: Still Struggling to Come of Age

Abstract

EXCERPT Enterococci have caused infections in hospitalized patients for many decades. Given that they were part of the normal flora of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and that they frequently appeared as part of the flora in infections related to fecal contamination, they originally were considered endogenous pathogens of little nosocomial import. This view began to change with the appearance of enterococci resistant to vancomycin in Europe in 1988.1 Vancomycin resistance appeared subsequent to earlier reports of enterococci resistant to pencillin2 and aminoglycosides,3,4 raising the concern that infections caused by vancomycin†resistant enterococci (VRE) might be difficult, if not impossible, to treat.