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Bacteria Becoming Resistant To Hospital Disinfectants, Warn Scientists (theguardian.com)

Posted by msmash on from the change-of-plans dept.

Hospitals will need to use new strategies to tackle bacteria experts have warned, after finding a type of hospital superbug is becoming increasingly tolerant of alcohol -- the key component of current disinfectant hand rubs. From a report: Handwashes based on alcohols such as isopropanol have become commonplace as a method of infection control. But while the move has been linked to benefits, including a fall in rates of hospital infections of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), new research suggests it might also have had unexpected consequences. Scientists say they have discovered that superbugs known as vancomycin-resistant enterococci, or VRE, appear to be becoming more tolerant to alcohol.

2 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Use bacteriophage by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What we need to do is find a suitable bacteriophage variant that can obliterate MRSA. It's not a permanent fix but it will buy us more time to figure out how to engineer bacteriophages.

    Bacteriophages and eventually engineered bacteriophages seem like the likely future for fighting bacterial infection. It also seems like machine learning would be a good fit for developing bacteriophage variants when resistant mutations are found.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:Use bacteriophage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Turns out that bacteria that evolve resistance to antibiotics tend to be weak against bacteriophages, and vice versa (wish I could find a citation, sorry!). But phages tend to be narrow spectrum. Also storage of phages is already a bit tricky, so you complicate it further by needing to store a huge library of phages to address targeted bacteria.

      Phage therapy is impractical on a large scale as it triggers an immune system response, and is quickly wiped from a healthy person's system. But for someone already immune compromised it could be a very useful therapy.

      For topical treatment most phages don't survive in open air and either oxidize or revert to a dormant state.

      (P.S. - almost all the phage research from the Soviet Union is crap. poorly designed studies, missing double-blind studies. conclusions determined before the outcome, political consensus building rather than honest peer review)