Overview of Molecular Diagnostics in Multiple-Drug-Resistant Organism Prevention: Focus on Multiple-Drug-Resistant Gram-Negative Bacterial Organisms

The combination of increasing rates of antibiotic resistance and the decreasing pace of new antibiotic development has become an urgent public health crisis (1). Multiple-drug-resistant bacterial organisms (MDROs) have now become common causes of health care-associated infection (HAI), the most prevalent being methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE), and a variety of multiple-drug-resistant Gram-negative rods (MDR-GNRs; organisms that are resistant to most, if not all, available antibiotic classes through myriad mechanisms, including production of β-lactamases with increasingly broad activity) (2–4).