WASHINGTON — Over six frightening months, a deadly germ untreatable by most antibiotics spread in the nation’s leading research hospital. Pretty soon, a patient a week was catching the bug. Scientists at the National Institutes of Health locked down patients, cleaned with bleach, even ripped out plumbing - and still the germ persisted.

By the end, 18 people harbored the dangerous germ, and six died of bloodstream infections from it. Another five made it through the outbreak only to die from the diseases that brought them to NIH’s world-famous campus in the first place.

It took gene detectives teasing apart the bacteria’s DNA to solve the germ’s wily spread, a CSI-like saga with lessons for hospitals everywhere as they struggle to contain the growing threat of superbugs.

It all stemmed from a single patient carrying a fairly new superbug known as KPC - Klebsiella pneumoniae that resists treatment by one of the last lines of defense, antibiotics called carbapenems.

‘We never want this to happen again,’ said Tara Palmore, deputy hospital epidemiologist at the NIH Clinical Center.

Infections at health care facilities are one of the nation’s leading causes of preventable death, claiming an estimated 99,000 lives a year. They’re something of a silent killer, […]