Common sources of acquisition might also be other household members, such as children.
Conversely, when acting simultaneously on sporadic sources of acquisition and cross-transmission, a better control would be expected.
In theory, clustering of antibiotic resistance in couples may reflect common sources of acquisition of resistant strains (or of resistant plasmids) as well as transmission of resistant strains (or resistant plasmids) between partners.
Common sources of acquisition may be, for example, hospital visits or hospital stays of one partner (who might have frequent visits by the other partner), or common nutritional sources.
Analysis of ITS variability revealed a greater number of haplotypes among C. albicans, C. tropicalis, C. glabrata and C. lusitaniae, which are predominantly related to endogenous sources of acquisition.
Recognition of invasive infections that occurred in 2 clusters of hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) recipients in our institution prompted us to perform a more thorough clinical investigation and environmental sampling to identify potential sources of acquisition.
Semi-structured qualitative interviews with IDUs were also conducted to learn about participants' needle/syringe sharing behaviour and sharing relationships, network size, sources of acquisition of sterile needles and syringes, and their perception about attitudes of community and healthcare providers (HCP) towards them.
There was clear clustering of water isolates by room and outlet, allowing the source of acquisitions to be unambiguously identified.
Using a comparable model for cephalosporin-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, Bootsma et al. found the endogenous route to be the quasi-exclusive source of acquisitions in two intensive care units [ 20].
During P2, the isolation ward had little impact on acquisition rates: the sporadic acquisition rate remained the only statistically significant source of acquisitions in the ward, while transmission from unisolated patients remained unchanged and insignificant (likelihood ratio test, null hypothesis β1 = 0, p-value 0.2).
