MRSA infections affect about 90,000 people each year in the US, and cause around 20,000 of those people to die. Shining a light on superbugsĬheng’s lab was most interested in tackling MRSA, since it’s difficult to treat and can cause deadly pneumonia infections and sepsis. “Can we use photons to deal with superbugs?” he asked his team. The CARB-X report indicated that antibiotic development cannot keep pace with evolving bacteria, and that nonconventional approaches are needed, says Cheng, who is a professor of biomedical engineering and electrical and computer engineering. Ji-Xin Cheng, the senior author on the Advanced Science paper about their findings, says it was a Boston University CARB-X report that inspired a few members of his biophotonics lab-which manipulates the properties of light for biological and medical applications-to join the fight against antibiotic resistance.
(Methicillin is a common antibiotic.) In people, MRSA, which often spreads very quickly, can cause skin and soft tissue infections as well as life-threatening sepsis. It turns out that it’s powerful enough to kill a particularly lethal kind of antibiotic-resistant bacteria-as long as it’s combined with a blue LED light or laser.īoston University College of Engineering researchers who invented the technique say they have shown, experimentally, it can kill 99.9 percent of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, known as MRSA. Oh, the stinging!īut now, a few decades later, I’ve finally found a reason to appreciate hydrogen peroxide. I usually cried, not because of the fall itself, but because I knew any scrape deep enough to bleed would attract the attention of my parents and cause them to reach into the medicine cabinet for that dreaded bottle of hydrogen peroxide.
Their technique, which they are preparing to take into a clinical trial, uses phototherapy and hydrogen peroxide to kill 99.9 percent of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.Īs a kid, I skinned my knees on a range of surfaces, from our asphalt driveway, to wood chips on the playground, to the concrete deck of our town pool. Photonics researchers at Boston University have developed a drug-free treatment for tough-to-treat MRSA infections.
How Light Turns Ordinary Hydrogen Peroxide into a MRSA Treatment BU engineers have invented a new blue light therapy that can kill MRSA without antibiotics
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