show Abstracthide AbstractThe project seeks to address a critically important question relating to the acquisition of pathogenic, drug-resistant bacteria by acutely ill hospital patients. The aim is to define reservoirs and transmission pathways relating to the acquisition of Escherichia coli producing extended-spectrum ?-lactamases (ESBL-EC) in a haematology cohort. The overall approach will be to identify numerous reservoirs of ESBL-EC in a geographically defined area, and use bacterial sequencing combined with mathematical modelling to predict transmission routes between them and the hospital cohort. The hypothesis is that interventions to reduce ESBL-EC carriage and disease in humans are reliant on an understanding of these transmission pathways.