The Staph infection is antibiotics-resistant

Jan 30, 2009 12:03 GMT  ·  By

Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) triggers a very unpleasant infection in humans, and especially in those with an already-weak immune system. It can be contracted both in the community (CA-MRSA) and in health care facilities, such as hospitals and free clinics (HA-MRSA), and it acts by lodging itself in the nostrils, the respiratory tract, opened wounds, intravenous catheters, or the urinary tract. It's notoriously hard to kill, as it developed a resistance to various classes of antibiotics. Now, researchers may have found a way of getting rid of the Staph, by simply shining a specific type of light on it.

In a study that will appear in the April 2009 issue of the journal Photomedicine and Laser Surgery, researchers from the New York Institute of Technology, in Westbury, NY, detail how shining blue light on cultures containing MRSA damages them permanently and causes up to a 90.3 percent reduction of the infections. The light has to be in the 470-nanometer wavelength, and tests concluded that the higher the dosage, the more bacteria are killed.

In addition to working so efficiently, the therapy does not involve additional medication, and, furthermore, it doesn't harm the patients by subjecting them to UV radiation, like other techniques do. High-dose photo-irradiation was proven to almost completely annihilate two of the most potent strands of the Staph, namely the US-300 strain of CA-MRSA and the IS-853 strain of HA-MRSA, which are very widespread in the United States and represent the most commonly-acquired infections in the community, and the hospital, respectively.

"It is inspiring that an inexpensive naturally visible wavelength of light can eradicate two common strains of MRSA. Developing strategies that are capable of destroying MRSA, using mechanisms that would not lead to further antibiotic resistance, is timely and important for us and our patients," says the first author of the study, Chukuka S. Enwemeka, PhD, FACSM, who is also co-editor-in-chief of the journal Photomedicine and Laser Surgery.

The research team added that the new therapy proved to be most effective in the case of cutaneous and sub-cutaneous infections, where simply shining the blue light over the affected spot caused massive damage to the Staph colonies. Hopefully, in the near future, hospitals and clinics will employ this type of lighting in treating MRSA patients on a daily basis.