Sprucing up health care with disease-killing paint

Some 90,000 excess deaths and $4.5 billion in extra spending are attributed each year to health care acquired infections. And that's just in the US. Especially troublesome are the antibiotic-resistant hospital acquired infections that are a growing health care burden. But researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are reporting on an innovative method for protecting patients by harnessing a natural enzyme with  nanotechnology.

A leading antibiotic-resistant bacteria in health care and health club settings is MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus). Though deadly to humans, MRSA is no match for a naturally occurring enzyme called lysostaphin. By piggy-backing the enzyme onto carbon nanotubes, the Rensselaer researchers have added it to a latex paint, creating a water-based coating that kills MRSA on contact. In tests, splashing a MRSA solution on surfaces coated with the enzyme-enhanced paint resulted in a 100 percent of the bacteria being killed, a potentially potent approach to an otherwise tough health care problem.

Best of all, the painted surface is safe to touch, does not appear to promote resistance, and will not leach into the environment. "Lysostaphin is exceptionally selective," says Jonathan Dordick, chemical and biological engineering professor at Rensselaer and one of the investigators on this project, "it doesn't work against other bacteria and it is not toxic to human cells."

The product has an effective shelf life of six months, and once applied, the nanotubes are highly stable and don't separate from the paint. Painted surfaces can even be washed several times without loosing potency. Since bacteria often lurk on frequently touched surfaces in health care settings such as tables and doors, using a bacteria-busting paint may be an elegant and appropriate solution to a costly and harmful problem.  We've discussed some other simple steps that reduce the risk that hospital-acquired infections pose to health care before. This new research appears in the journal ACS Nano.

Photo credit: The author