Scientists Develop Surgical Gel That Glows In Presence Of Bacterial Infection
Not sure if that deep cut is infected? A new gel could provide the answer.
Scientists have developed a gel that glows pink in ultraviolet light when in the presence of bacteria. The gel contains fluorescent polymers that are attached to antibiotics, and the antibiotics latch on to infection-causing bacteria.
"The availability of these gels would help clinicians and wound care nurses to make rapid, informed decisions about wound management, and help reduce the overuse of antibiotics," study researcher Dr. Steve Rimmer, of the University of Sheffield, said in a statement. The gel could also help army medics to determine if soliders' wounds are infected, according toThe Guardian.
Scientists found that the gel is able tokill 80 percent of the present bacteriain three hours,The Guardianreported.
Right now, to determine if a wound is infected, doctors must swab the wound and then send the swabs to a lab to see if they grow any bacteria in a culture. However, this process can take days, and the new gel has the potential to cut that time down to just a few hours, researchers said.
Right now, the gel has only been tried on tissue engineered human skin. But researchers told BBC News that they hopehuman trialscan begin in the next couple of years.
The news of a glow-in-the-dark infection detector joins the earlier news this week ofglow-in-the-dark cats, that were engineered to glow green as a sign that their bodies are making proteins that can fight against the feline immunodeficiency virus (cat version of HIV).
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
