A study has shown pens used in hospital wards and shared by staff may cause antibiotic-resistant infections and kill thousands of people each year.

Around 5,000 patients die every year as a result of infections they have contracted while inside a hospital.

Some bacteria, such as MRSA which causes blood poisoning and pneumonia, cannot be treated by antibiotics such as penicillin .

The survey, carried out at London's St Thomas's Hospital, found a quarter of pens contained bacteria.

The research was done for the BBC's Watchdog Healthcheck programme and the findings published in a letter to The Lancet medical journal.

More people die in the UK of infections caught in hospital than are killed in road accidents.

The alarming new findings suggest doctors' and nurses' pens could be a major source of infection.

More than 50 different pens were examined during the study.

Doctors also warn of the danger of passing infections from ward to ward by sharing pens or having staff work in different parts of a hospital.

Since carrying out the study, St Thomas's has implemented a policy of giving patients individual pens and has asked doctors and nurses to be vigilant in handling them.

But, in their letter to The Lancet, the researchers at the hospital's Departments of Microbiology and Infection Control, warn against an over-reaction.

"All three of the pathogens investigated here are well known to be transmitted on staff hands and MRSA and VRE survive well in the environment," they write. "The results should be interpreted with caution. It is well recognised that the hospital environment can become contaminated with pathogena from infected patients without necessarily being involved in the transmission or infection.

"The contamination of of doctors' and nurses' pens with MRSA and VRE may merely be a reflection of staff hand contamination.

"Nevertheless, staff may unwittingly re-inoculate their hands with those organisms if they use their pens after handwashing, pathogens might be spread between staff if they share or remove pens from the nurses' station, as is common, and pens might by the route of transmission between wards."

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