bacterial biofilm
University of Birmingham and NIHR Surgical Reconstruction and Microbiology Research Centre (SRMRC) investigated antibacterial activity of acetic acid against key burn wound colonising organisms growing both planktonically and as biofilms.
Burns are a common traumatic injury and prone to becoming infected due to loss of a normal skin barrier. Local infection of the burn wound and subsequent sepsis are key concerns for patients, with sepsis the leading cause of death among patients with burn wounds. Infections of burn wounds are difficult to treat with traditional antibiotics as they do not effectively reach the wound, and the infecting organisms are often highly antibiotic resistant.
Low concentrations of acetic acid can be used to treat biofilms, and thus be used as alternatives to topical (surface applied) antimicrobials and traditional antimicrobial dressings for preventing bacterial colonisation of burns. “As resistance to antibiotics grows, we need to find ways to replace them with alternative topical agents that can kill bacteria and help our burns patients. The evidence in this study offers great promise to be a cheap and effective measure to do just that.”
29 isolates of common wound-infecting pathogens including Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Acinetobacter baumannii, Staphylococcus aureus, Enterococcus faecalis, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Enterobacter spp. were grown in the laboratory. Low concentrations of acetic acid (0.16-0.3%) were shown to be able to inhibit growth of all strains, prevent them from forming biofilms (bacteria attached to a surface) and also to eradicate mature biofilms for all isolates after 3 hours of exposure. Previous clinical use of acetic acid as an antimicrobial treatment has used much higher concentrations of 2.5%.
“As much as 80% of infections in the body are due to these biofilms which, typically, are even more resistant to antibiotics because they essentially have safety in numbers and their metabolic rate is a lot slower. For that reason, seeing that acetic acid was effective against all types of these pathogens was really great.”
The team are now designing clinical trials with acetic acid in which they will test plain dressings soaked with acetic acid, against the more commonly used silver-based dressings. A further study will test the effectiveness of two specific concentrations of acetic acid on patients at the Healing Foundation Centre for Burns Research based at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-09/uob-aaf091515.php
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