A discrete-time model of the acquisition of antibiotic-resistant infections in hospitalized patients.

Antibiotic use is thought to promote bacterial antibiotic resistance by selectively inhibiting the growth of sensitive strains. This study investigates the relation between antibiotic use and the propagation of antibiotic-resistant hospital-acquired infections due to gram-negative bacteria in a population of hospitalized patients. It treats infection spread and hospital mortality as a Markov process, in which the transition probabilities are logistic functions of a set of personal and hospital characteristics. Data from a university hospital are used to derive the parameters of the model.