Scientists create antimicrobial surfaces to fight hospital-acquired infections

Scientists from UCL have created light-activated antimicrobial surfaces that could help fight the spread of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). Professor Ivan Parkin (UCL Chemistry) and Professor Mike Wilson (UCL Eastman Dental Institute) have modified silicone with tiny amounts of commonly used dyes. The role of contaminated surfaces in the transmission of HAIs is an area of great scientific interest - particularly in the light of much publicised cases of infection due to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Clostridium difficile in UK hospitals. Silicone ' a polymer made from silicon, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and sometimes other chemical elements ' is used in medical equipment such as catheters, but bacteria can colonise its surface and infections associated with catheter use are common. Professor Parkin and Professor Wilson, working with colleagues in the UK and Spain, have developed a groundbreaking way to modify silicone so that it kills bacteria when exposed to light from a laser or from ordinary fluorescent lamps. The process involves dipping the silicone in a solution where it bonds with organic dyes, then washing and drying it. After a few minutes' exposure to light from a low power laser, the number of live bacteria on the surface of the silicone dramatically decreases.