What is vre?
VRE stands for Vancomycin Resistant Enterococcus. The Enterococcus is a bacterium (germ) that everyone has in their bowel. Vancomycin is one of the antibiotics used to treat infections caused by the Enterococcus germ. Sometimes this germ develops resistance to Vancomycin. When this occurs, the infection can no longer be treated by Vancomycin. Healthy people can carry VRE with no ill effects or signs and symptoms. This is called colonisation. This is the most common situation with VRE. People who are colonised do not need treatment. In hospitals VRE can cause infections in a small minority of very sick patients whose ability to fight off infections has been lowered. When this occurs, it is more difficult to treat these patients, although there are still several antibiotics to which the VRE is susceptible.
