A new analysis of swab samples taken from patients before endoscopy procedures indicates that nearly 83 per cent of patients in India may be carrying multidrug-resistant organisms.
Researchers collected rectal and throat–nose swabs from 1,244 patients across tertiary healthcare centres in the Netherlands, India, Italy and the US between January 2022 and October 2024.
Overall, 462 patients — or 37 per cent — tested positive for a multidrug-resistant organism. Among the nearly 350 patients screened in India, 290, or 83.1 per cent, were found to harbour such organisms.
“Prevalence was highest in India (290 of 349, 83.1 per cent) and lowest in the Netherlands (37 of 343, 10.8 per cent), with intermediate rates in Italy (66 of 209, 31.5 per cent) and the United States (69 of 343, 20.1 per cent),” the authors, including researchers from AIG Hospitals in Hyderabad, wrote in the study published in the journal eClinicalMedicine.
The authors said the findings highlight stark global variations in the prevalence of multidrug-resistant organisms, reflecting underlying differences in antimicrobial resistance patterns.
Among Indian patients, ‘Extended-spectrum beta-lactamase-producing Enterobacterales’ (ESBLE-E), a group resistant to common antibiotics, emerged as the most widespread, while MRSA — another well-known “superbug” — appeared more frequently among US patients.
According to the study, a patient in India may be nearly 100 times more likely to carry a multidrug-resistant organism than a patient in the Netherlands, while a patient in Italy may be 6.6 times more likely.
The analysis also identified additional risk factors that raised the likelihood of carrying a multidrug-resistant organism, including chronic lung disease, congestive heart failure and prior use of penicillins.
The researchers suggested that efforts to curb the endoscope-related spread of multidrug-resistant organisms should be aligned with local antibiotic-resistance patterns rather than applying a uniform strategy worldwide.
They concluded that pre-procedure screening and targeted infection-prevention measures should form part of broader, region-specific infection-control frameworks.