It's respiratory illness season

Slippery Toilet Bowl Treatment Causes Bacteria To Slide Right Off

When entering public restrooms, it's hard not to dwell on what germs previous users have left behind in the toilet bowl. Imagine, instead, a self-cleaning system that doesn't require a brightly colored gel. Researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have developed a simple, transparent coating that makes surfaces like porcelain more water-repellent. They show how this surface treatment effectively prevents bacteria from sticking to the inside of a toilet bowl.

Coatings can be applied to glass and porcelain to ensure water droplets easily slide off, preventing fog or bacterial films from developing, for example. To add this water-repellant property to surfaces, scientists typically engineer microscopic structures, like the tiny barbs and hooks on bird feathers, to trap air or oils between the surface and water droplets. But this approach is typically labor intensive and can change the appearance of the surface.

Another approach is to graft slippery polymer chains onto a surface, and those polymers act like a permanent oil slick. However, this technique can involve harsh chemicals and isn't feasible for use on everyday items. So, Mustafa Serdar Onses and coworkers wanted to find a more practical way to make polymer-grafted surfaces repel water and impede growth of bacterial films.

Their selected approach involved grinding poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS), a silicone oil, in a ball mill for an hour. In the mill, small tungsten carbide balls bombarded the oil at high speeds, breaking apart some of the polymer's chemical bonds and forming new molecules. The team hypothesized that the milled PDMS would graft quickly onto surfaces, such as glass or porcelain, forming a durable, oily layer.

The researchers brushed the milled oil onto one side of a sterilized toilet's bowl interior, leaving the other half untreated. Then they poured sterile human urine combined with E. Coli and S. Aureus bacteria into the toilet and subsequently swabbed what was left behind on both halves of the bowl. Bacteria culture tests showed that the PDMS-treated area inhibited 99.99% of the bacterial growth as compared to the untreated area.

Additional experiments showed that both porcelain and glass surfaces coated with the milled PDMS strongly repelled water, suggesting that in the first test, urine and bacteria slipped right down the treated toilet bowl's wall. The researchers say that their transparent and colorless toilet bowl treatment method could be a practical way to self-sanitize shared surfaces for public health applications.

More information: Nusret Celik et al, Mechanochemical Activation of Silicone for Large-Scale Fabrication of Anti-Biofouling Liquid-like Surfaces, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2023). DOI: 10.1021/acsami.3c11352

Citation: Slippery toilet bowl treatment causes bacteria to slide right off (2023, November 28) retrieved 30 November 2023 from https://phys.Org/news/2023-11-slippery-toilet-bowl-treatment-bacteria.Html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

Family Credits Antibiotic With Saving Their Dog's Life Amid Mystery Respiratory Illness

As cases of serious respiratory illness affecting dogs remain on the rise across the country, one family is sharing how an antibiotic helped their dog survive.

Becky Oliver of California told "Good Morning America" her family's 5-year-old golden retriever, Ike, rapidly developed an alarmingly high fever in September while traveling to compete in dog shows.

"He really didn't exhibit any symptoms at the beginning, maybe a cough here or there," she told "GMA." "When they took his temperature at the emergency vet hospital in Arizona, they said his fever was 105.3. His color wasn't good."

To date, the unknown illness impacting dogs like Ike has been reported in multiple states, including Oregon, California and Colorado.

While research is underway, veterinarians say the mystery illness is highly contagious and in severe cases can be fatal. Reported symptoms so far have also been typical of kennel cough: They include coughing, sneezing, nasal and/or eye discharge and lethargy.

Becky Oliver said Ike's condition later developed into pneumonia, forcing him to spend multiple days in a veterinary hospital.

Ike began to fall sick in September while on the road competing in dog shows, according to his owners.

Oliver Family

At one point, Becky Oliver said her family was told by the medical team that they did not think Ike was going to survive the illness.

MORE: Mystery dog illness continues to spread

She said she saw a glimmer of hope after learning about an antibiotic called chloramphenicol, which could be a potential treatment for the unknown disease.

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"The vet at first was like, 'Oh, no, no, that's an extremely strong antibiotic, kind of a last-ditch effort antibiotic,'" she recalled. "And then the internal medicine veterinarian came over and said, 'No, let's try it.'"

According to Becky Oliver, 12 hours after Ike received the first dose of the medication, he was weaned off oxygen and able to return home later that week.

Becky Oliver's husband John Oliver told "GMA" their family's beloved dog is now back to his normal self.

"He looks great ... He's jumping around," John Oliver said. "We still can't believe he's still here."

Ike is a 5-year-old golden retriever.

Oliver Family

Dr. Lindsey Ganzer, a veterinarian and the owner of the North Springs Veterinary Referral Center, described chloramphenicol as an "incredibly powerful antibiotic."

Ganzer, who did not treat Ike, confirmed the medication is most often used as a "last resort" option.

"That particular antibiotic is typically used as a last resort," Ganzer told "GMA." "It is one where, you know, if we give it to an owner to give to a dog, they have to handle it with gloves because people can't really touch it."

MORE: Vet shares symptoms of mystery respiratory illness in dogs, answers viewers' questions

Ganzer said she recommends dog owners stay away from boarding or bringing your dog to an environment with other dogs, at least temporarily.

"[The] most important thing is to avoid any areas where there are a lot of dogs in that space. So, avoid boarding them. Avoid doggie day cares, going to the groomer, going to dog parks," Ganzer said.

Ganzer added that if owners do see their pets exhibiting symptoms of the mystery illness, they should isolate the dog and then seek medical attention.

"We don't know how it's spread, whether it is direct contact or whether it is through the air. If your dog is symptomatic, definitely get seen by a veterinarian sooner rather than later," Ganzer said. "The earlier that treatment starts, the better chance they have of not progressing and developing into a pneumonia."

Researchers Develop Material That Reduces Bacterial Infection And Speeds Up Bone Healing

Researchers at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences and Advanced Materials and Bioengineering Research Centre (AMBER) have developed a new surgical implant that has the potential to transform the treatment of complex bone infections. When implanted on an injured or infected bone, the material can not only speed up bone healing it also reduces the risk of infections without the need for traditional antibiotics.

The newly published paper in the journal Advanced Materials tackles the complex clinical problem of bone infection, or osteomyelitis, which affects one in around 5,000 people within the US only each year.

When a bone is infected, the priority is to heal it quickly. Standard clinical treatment, including several weeks with antibiotics and often removing the infected portion of bone tissue, can be slow. Already, around half of bone infections are caused by MRSA, which is resistant to antibiotics, and prolonged antibiotic treatment pushes up the risk of infections becoming tolerant to the treatments we have at our disposal, making infections harder to control.

To help patients heal well, researchers at RCSI created a material from a substance that is similar to our bones. The scaffold-like structure of this material means that when it is implanted into injured or diseased bone, it encourages the bone to regrow.

In this case, the RCSI researchers infused the scaffold with tiny nanoparticles of copper, which are known to kill the bacterium that causes most bone infections. Furthermore, they also incorporated a specific genetic molecule, an inhibitor of microRNA-138, into the scaffold to stimulate the formation of new bone at the site where the material is implanted.

In the study, the researchers describe how preclinical lab tests showed the implanted scaffolds with the copper nanoparticles and microRNA could stimulate bone regrowth in a fortnight, and that the scaffold stopped 80% of potentially harmful bacteria from attaching to the site.

They also saw that the implants stimulated a good blood supply to cells on the scaffold, which is crucial for the health and viability of the newly formed bone.

"Overall, we combined the power of antimicrobial implants and gene therapies, leading to a holistic system which repairs bone and prevents infection," says the first author of the study, Dr. Joanna Sadowska, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the RCSI Tissue Engineering Research Group (TERG).

"This makes a significant step forward in treating complex bone injuries, and the timescale we saw in our preclinical studies suggests our approach could revolutionize treatment times for patients in the future."

Professor of Bioengineering and Regenerative Medicine at RCSI, Prof. Fergal O'Brien, Principal Investigator on the paper and Head of TERG, sees many potential benefits to the implant.

"This implant can deliver the antimicrobial treatment directly to the infected bone, so it can be a local and targeted approach, as opposed to exposing more of the body to long-term antibiotics," he says.

"Add to this that our implant incorporates copper particles that can stop bacteria from establishing an infection at the site, and at the same time they stimulate blood vessel formation in bone. The nature of the implant also means that the body can naturally break down the material when the bone heals, so there is no need to remove it surgically."

Professor O'Brien, who is Deputy Director of AMBER, the SFI Centre for Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research, sees the implant as an important future step mode of targeted delivery for more precise and effective treatments of injured and diseased bone.

"This is a first-of-its-kind implant that integrates different solutions to encourage bone regrowth and address infections, and the new study is an important step to bringing it toward patients for faster and more effective treatments," he said.

More information: Joanna M. Sadowska et al, A multifunctional scaffold for bone infection treatment by delivery of microRNA therapeutics combined with antimicrobial nanoparticles, Advanced Materials (2023). DOI: 10.1002/adma.202307639

Citation: Researchers develop material that reduces bacterial infection and speeds up bone healing (2023, November 28) retrieved 30 November 2023 from https://medicalxpress.Com/news/2023-11-material-bacterial-infection-bone.Html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

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