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The research sheds light on how lung infections can result in the spread of a major disease-causing bacterium between multiple parts of the body, increasing the risk of sepsis in vulnerable patients. It is a life threatening condition and in the UK, there are 48,000 sepsis related deaths each year and five related deaths occur every hour.1 In a previous study,2 research has shown that P. aeruginosa has moved from the gut to the lungs in an individual intensive care unit (ICU) patient, bringing to light its ability to move and colonise other body sites. This persistence helps explain why the bug can be so difficult to eradicate in hospital settings." "Notoriously difficult to eradicate, Pseudomonas infections are a major issue in our Intensive Care Units, particularly in patients with weakened immune systems, and a major cause of sepsis," added Dr Ron Daniels, Founder and Chief Medical Officer, the UK Sepsis Trust. "This new research serves to enhance our understanding of this organism which can only be good for our patients now and in the future — it highlights how little we know about disease-causing bugs and their behaviours." Professor Jukka Corander, co-author at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and University of Oslo, Norway, said: "We also saw rapid genetic changes in antibiotic resistance genes, no matter where the bacterium was found in the body."