Doctors at UCLA’s flagship hospital were baffled: A healthy 40-year-old woman had fallen deathly ill after a routine procedure.

A long black scope had been threaded down her throat to treat troublesome gallstones. Now antibiotics were powerless to stop a raging infection.

Her physicians called in Dr. Zachary Rubin, the hospital’s director of clinical epidemiology and infection prevention, and its top disease detective.

He immediately suspected the scope itself — a dirty one could cause this kind of infection.

Read more here on the UCLA superbug…

Read the article “A Killer on the Loose: The UCLA Superbug” on graphics.latimes.com.