WASHINGTON: The epidemiologist and the genome researcher had met at a colleague’s send-off, one a doctor chasing down hospital-acquired diseases at the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Center, the other mapping their genetic codes in a lab across NIH’s Bethesda, Maryland, campus.
Two accomplished women in their 40s in male-dominated fields, they clicked instantly. Each with a husband, and five children younger than 12 between them, Tara Palmore and Julie Segre balanced their commitment to science with the demands of raising young families. They would collaborate professionally someday, they decided — when their schedules allowed.
It was just two weeks before the theoretical became frighteningly real and the scientists were thrown into the biggest case of their careers, and they began racing to stop the spread of an outbreak at the hospital that killed seven patients. Four others who were infected died of underlying illnesses.
By the time the last patient died in September 2012, 18 people had been sickened by the Klebsiella pneumoniae bacterium. The “superbug” escaped strict controls at the Clinical Center, one of the country’s premier research hospitals, crawling through isolation units and hiding in already-cleaned ventilators and sink drains.
It was stamped out only after Segre’s team took genetic sequencing to a new level, using the bacterium’s DNA to map its path in the hospital. The unusual collaboration, using gumshoe work and cutting-edge genomics, has brought new attention to hospital infections, which kill about 100,000 patients a year — and the dangers of a growing number of illnesses that antibiotics won’t cure.
“Our patients are so vulnerable,” said Palmore, 42, the hospital’s deputy epidemiologist. The bug attacks only those with weak defenses, and as a hospital of last resort, NIH admits patients with compromised immune systems. “No antibiotic worked. It was terrifying.”
The nonprofit Partnership for Public Service called the team — which included Palmore’s boss, deputy clinical care director David Henderson, and Evan Snitkin, a post-doctoral fellow on Segre’s staff — a “groundbreaking model for the health-care industry” when it named Segre and Palmore as finalists for this year’s Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal in the Science and Environment category.
NIH scientists team up to thwart lethal bacteria
