If used on a large scale, their method could change the nature of hospital-acquired infections 'toward being more susceptible to antibiotics rather than more resistant,' say researchers.
Israeli researchers are laying the groundwork for a spray which they say will make it easier to get rid of the antibiotic-resistant germs that plague hospitals, here and around the world.
If used on a large scale, their method could change the nature of hospital-acquired infections "toward being more susceptible to antibiotics rather than more resistant," the researchers say in an article in this month's issue of Applied and Environment Microbiology, a journal published by the American Society for Microbiology.
Lead researcher Dr. Udi Qimron, a microbiologist at Tel Aviv University's Sackler School of Medicine, said their system works by changing the genetic makeup of antibiotic-resistant bacteria - which he said is vital because these germs have proven impossible to eradicate by other means.
"You can kill the bacteria by cleaning with bleach, but you can't kill them 100 percent, and you can't control the secretion of of resistant bacteria, like when a patient sneezes in the [hospital] ward," said Qimron, who worked on the project with the researchers Rotem Edgar, Nir Friedman and Shahar Molshanski-Mor. "Using a substance that moves the bacteria toward susceptibility to antibiotics will prevent resistant bacteria from multiplying on the hospital surfaces."
Some 1,500 people died of antibiotic-resistant infections in Israeli hospitals last year alone - a 7-percent rise since 2009, according to a Health Ministry report released earlier this year. The data do not show whether the infections were actually acquired in the hospital, but previous research indicates that more than two-thirds of infections are transmitted in medical centers, Yehuda Carmeli of the epidemiology unit at Tel Aviv's Ichilov Hospital said after the report came out.
Qimron and the other researchers say their method paves the way for development of a spray that contains the bacteriophages, or bacteria-infecting viruses, they successfully used to render the bacteria sensitive to antibiotics. The spray could be used wherever there are large concentrations of resistant germs, like beds, handrails, door handles, faucets - and, in Israel, the mezuzahs that many Jews touch before entering a room.
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