Hospital superbug 'eating' medical plastics, devices & implants: Study

NEW DELHI: Pseudomonas aeruginosa , a bacteria known for causing 10%-30% of hospital-acquired infections in India, has been shown to break down plastic used in sutures, stents, wound dressings and implants. The “world-first discovery” published in the journal Cell Reports challenges the widely held belief that pathogens cannot degrade medical plastics.

It also means any medical device or treatment that contains plastic could be susceptible to degradation by bacteria, the study said.

Professor Ronan McCarthy, who led the study, said, “It means we need to reconsider how pathogens exist in the hospital environment.” Plastics, including plastic surfaces, could potentially be food for these bacteria. Pathogens with this ability could survive for longer in the hospital environment, he added. McCarthy and his team isolated the enzyme Pap1 from a strain of pseudomonas aeruginosa that was originally sampled from a patient’s wound. Tested in a lab, the enzyme degraded 78% of a plastic sample in just seven days. Crucially, the bacteria could also use plastic as its only carbon source — effectively eating it.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is among a bacteria group responsible for most hospital infections that can resist antibiotics.