A little bit behind
the crowd on this one and it's been far too long since I last posted but what
better way to get the ball rolling again than to talk about research coming out
of Sligo. After all, there is no point calling all this Sligo Microbe if I don't highlight the output from the North West.
The work I'm talking
about is of course the paper by Prof. Suresh Pillai (link below), from IT
Sligo, which has identified a chemical mixture that can be used as an anti-microbial
coating. All this came to my attention after the large amount of media coverage
that the work received; it was even picked up by The Guardian in the UK.
(https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/15/the-innovators-irish-coating-superbug-mrsa-e-coli)
The excitement
heralded in all the news reports described this work as a defence against
"superbugs", in particular the deadly MRSA. However after reading the
actual publication I was left a little perplexed. It would appear that this is
yet another example of scientific findings being taken out of context*.
The work itself and
the development of this surface is genuinely great work. As I am not a material
scientist or physicist, my full understanding of the finer details is limited
but, put simply, this group has developed a coating of titanium dioxide with
copper and fluorine, which when activated by light could kill bacteria.
What puzzled me was, nowhere
in this paper is there a conclusion drawn that the coating will kill MRSA or
any other supposed "superbug". The coating is only tested against a
single strain of Staphylococcus aureus which
is not MRSA. The potential future applications, in terms of medical device
coatings and even mobile phones may well play out but certainly more evidence
for a role in killing "superbugs" is required.
I would hope that
people take that extra step when reading science related media articles to look
up the original source or at least approach these media reports with a degree
of caution.
As you will
undoubtedly have seen elsewhere in the news over the last few days, there is a
serious problem with bacteria which have become resistant to the antimicrobials
we use to kill them. As time passes, the antibiotics we use to treat infections
are becoming less and less effective. It's great to see that a research group
from Sligo is helping in the fight to combat this threat. Hopefully we will
hear much more of this story as more work is carried out.
Link to published
article: http://www.nature.com/articles/srep24770
*For anyone interested
in looking into this more, they should check out the great piece done recently
by John Oliver which gives a good overview of how scientific findings and their
messages get changed.
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