Stories tagged germs

Nice spine protector, dude: But can it stop meningitis?
Courtesy jeffedoeWho needs to live their life with crippling paranoia? No one; it was a rhetorical question. It’s time we grab our paranoia by the soft spot, and say, “let’s just be friends, okay?”

Thanks to technology brought to us by the future, in conjunction with the University of South Dakota (and possibly money from the Department of Defense), we may finally be able to take the “crippling” out of “crippling paranoia.” The paranoia will stay with us, of course, because that’s what gives us our strength, but we will live with the confidence that the dangers of the world are actually two steps behind us.

The invention of Kevlar was a coup in the sweaty, awkward wrestling match of crippling paranoia—the high strength fiber assured protection from low caliber firearms and low temperature fires alike. One could strut confidently down the street, swathed in high tech fabric, feeling pretty safe from random gunshots, and flaming sewer explosions, and cougar attacks.

But…what if the cougar’s mouth is full of germs? I mean, it would be, wouldn’t it? Germs are a lot smaller than bullets, and maybe they could penetrate the Kevlar weave… And what if I accidentally licked my armor after a particularly sour sewer explosion?

Crippled. With. Paranoia.

Until now! The future and South Dak… whatever, those things I mentioned above, they’ve made another move in the arms war against paranoia: Germ-resistant Kevlar. By coating the fabric with a chemical called N-Halamine, a Kevlar garment could gain long-lasting anti-microbial properties. What’s more, once it does wear down, the chemical can be reactivated with diluted bleach, which is convenient, because I’m always carrying bleach around anyway (to fight the germs).

This is very exciting. I mean, with armor to best enemies both great and small, what’s there to be worried about? Invisible enemies?

Invisible enemies. Invisible, radioactive enemies…

Tags : Kevlar, armor, materials science, germs

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Do you eat food that has fallen on the floor? Do you follow the five second rule? Scientists at Clemson University have extended the studies of Jillian Clarke, a high-school intern at the University of Illinois in 2003, on this topic. Their results are reported in the Journal of Applied Microbiology and summarized in a recent NY times article.

They conducted three experiments to determine the survival and transfer of Salmonella bacteria from wood, tile or carpet to bologna (sausage) and bread.

They found:
• Salmonella bacteria can survive for up to 4 weeks on dry surfaces in high-enough populations to be transferred to foods
• Salmonella bacteria can be transferred to the foods tested almost immediately on contact.

This study demonstrated the ability of bacteria to survive and cross-contaminate other foods even after long periods of time on dry surfaces, thus reinforcing the importance of sanitation on food contact to minimize the risk of foodborne illness.

So what do you do?

Tags : bacteria, infectious disease, germs, infection

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Transmission electron micrograph of Escherichia coli O157:H7: Courtesy CDC A recent NY times article looks into various approaches underdevelopment to prevent or treat food poisoning by the bacteria E. coli O157:H7. These approaches include:
Prevention – as we saw last fall, this does not always work. This is especially true with fresh produce.
Cattle vaccines – it reduces but does not eliminate the E. coli found in manure. Would this give us a false sense of security? What would the incentive be for farmers to vaccinate their herds? Cows don’t get sick from the bacteria so it would have to be a mandate or altruism.
Cattle antibiotics – feeding antibiotics to cows raises concerns of creating more antibiotic resistant pathogens.
Industrial chemicals – feed cows sodium chlorate which the O157 bacteria converts to it to sodium chlorite which poisons the pathogen
Bacterial-killing viruses – these are viruses that infect and kill only bacteria.
Friendly bacteria – is also known as probiotics. This approach feeds cattle friendly bacteria to displace the O157 bacteria. It is already sold to aid cattle digestion and some believe it reduces the amount of O157 bacteria in the manure
Human vaccines – are still years from the market. Early testing looks promising. Testing the effectiveness will be difficult. Should we be vaccinating every child in order to protect a small number? And would this make us lax with our food handling techniques. That will lead to other food and water borne infections.
Human drugs for treatment – outbreaks are rare and sporadic so these would be hard to test in clinical trials. The clues that signal an infection don’t start until 3-4 days after ingestion of the bacteria so it might also be hard to diagnose and treat the infection in a timely manner.
Monoclonal antibodies – these are a synthetic version of your body’s own infection fighters. They seem to be working in animals and with early human safety trials. But the cost is prohibitive to test them in order to prevent hemolytic uremic syndrome. This would start working once the toxin is already in the bloodstream so there are questions about its effectiveness.

We will probably see a few of these techniques used in parallel. What do you think is the best approach and why?

Tags : bacteria, health, E. coli, cattle, germs, food poisoning

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