Pneumonia Being Nipped in the Bud

What am I looking at?

This is an image of Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria and a human neutrophil – an important part of the immune system – cultured in a petri dish. The bacteria are pink (1) and the neutrophil is gray (2).

Biology in the Background

Klebsiella pneumoniae is a common bacterium that can live in your gut and does not cause illness when it’s present there. However, if these bacteria are inhaled or end up in your lungs via improper sterilization of surgical equipment, they can cause a serious case of pneumonia. Similarly, if they are able to enter your bloodstream through a wound, they can infect your blood and cause serious illness.

Even worse, these bacteria have developed resistance to several major antibiotics that are commonly used to treat bacterial infections. This is a significant problem in hospitals because if they are introduced to your lungs or bloodstream during or after an operation, the standard antibiotics that physicians and surgeons use to prevent postsurgical infections may not stop an infection effectively. Luckily, however, if the problem is caught in time, there are several less common antibiotics that have shown more success in treating Klebsiella pneumoniae infections.

A Klebsiella pneumoniae bacterium is between 1 micrometer and 2 micrometers long, or roughly 75 times smaller than the width of a human hair. A neutrophil is much larger – it can be up to 15 micrometers in diameter, or roughly five times smaller than the width of a human hair.

Technique

This image was created using colored scanning electron microscopy.