By contrast, testing of an equal number of similar items that were manually scrubbed down with a disinfectant solution, called Airex, showed that 25 percent of the devices had bacterial growth after two days, including growth of potentially dangerous gram-positive bacteria, such as MRSA and VRE, as well as gram-negative type bacteria, most notably, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Acinetobacter baumannii, plus some types of fungi.

"Our study results with the prototype offer strong evidence that more can be done to disinfect noncritical equipment through automated decontamination processes in heavily trafficked areas of the hospital," says Asiyanbola, an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "We believe this SUDS device has the potential to further protect our patients and staff from hospital infections and save health care dollars by making it possible to clean and re-use more kinds of hospital equipment."


The Hopkins inventors, who have patent applications pending, say more studies must be done to determine if SUDS is effective for other hospital superbugs, notably, Clostridium difficile.

Asiyanbola worked closely with Karen Carroll, M.D., director of microbiology and a professor of pathology and medicine, and Allison Agwu, M.D., an assistant professor, both at Johns Hopkins, to assemble the necessary team to help test the prototype. Funding was provided by a grant from the Department of Surgery at The Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Besides Asiyanbola, Carroll and Agwu, other Johns Hopkins University researchers involved in this study were C. Obasi, M.D., Richard Rothman, M.D., and T. Ross, M.T., at the School of Medicine; W. Akinpelu, M.Sc., and R. Hammons, Ph.D., at the University's Applied Physics Laboratory; C. Clarke, Ph.D., and R. Etienne-Cummings, Ph.D., at the University's Whiting School of Engineering; P. Hill, M.D., and S. Babola, Ph.D., at the University's Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Source: Johns Hopkins

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