Cosmetics May Cause Fatal Infections in Critically Ill Patients

While healthy consumers can cope with the low levels of bacteria occasionally found in cosmetics, a new study has found that severely ill patients may face life-threatening infections triggered by these same bacteria.

Researchers at the Hospital Universitari del Mar (Barcelona, Spain) described a Burkholderia cepacia bacteria-outbreak routine that affected five patients admitted to a multidisciplinary 18-bed intensive care unit (ICU). The hospital infection-control surveillance pinpointed the bacteria, and over a period of 18 days, isolates of B. cepacia were recovered from different biological samples from the five patients who were infected. Isolation of B. cepacia was associated with bacteraemia in three cases, lower respiratory tract infection in one and urinary tract infection in one.

The researchers then tested a number of environmental samples, including antiseptics, eau de Cologne, and moisturizing body milk available in treatment carts at that time. The samples were collected and cultured, and the researchers discovered that moisturizing body milk used in the patients' care was a B. cepacia reservoir. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis experiments then confirmed that all of the strains of B. cepacia found in both patient and environmental samples were from the same bacterial clone; tests on sealed containers of the moisturizer confirmed that the bacteria had not invaded the product after it had been opened, but that it was contaminated during manufacturing, transportation, or storage. The study was published on January 31, 2008 in the open access journal Critical Care.

"This outbreak of nosocomial infection caused by B. cepacia in five severely ill patients supports a strong recommendation against the use cosmetic products for which there is no guarantee of sterilization during the manufacturing process,” said lead author Francisco Álvarez-Lerma, M.D., Ph.D.

B. cepacia is a group or "complex” of bacteria that can be found in soil and water. They are highly resistant to numerous antimicrobials and antiseptics, and are characterized by the capacity to survive in a large variety of hospital microenvironments. The bacteria pose little medical risk to healthy people; however, patients with weakened immune systems or chronic lung diseases, particularly cystic fibrosis (CF), may be more susceptible to B. cepacia infection.


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Hospital Universitari del Mar