Efficiency of Silver Oxide Coating in Preventing an Ascending Catheter Associated Urinary Tract Infection (CAUTI)

Pradeep Kumar S S*, Remya N S*, Dr. Sreenivasan K’, Dr. A Maya Nandkumar*

*Dept. of Microbiology, ‘Laboratory of Polymer Analysis, BMT wing, Sree Chithra Thirunal Institute for Medical Science & Technology, Poojappura, Trivandrum 695012

CAUTI is the most common nosocomial infection. each year more than one million patients in U.S acute care hospitals acquire CAUTI . CAUTI is also the 2nd most common cause of nosocomial blood stream infection and studies suggests that patients with CAUTI have an increased institutional death rate, unrelated to urosepsis. The quest for an effective, cost free anti- microbial biomaterial has paved the way for the evaluation of antibacterial property of silver oxide coated Foley’s catheter in preventing catheter associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI). Antimicrobial activity of silver oxide coating was analyzed by diffusion as well as dilution methods against three clinical strains- Escherichia coli, Proteus mirabilis & Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolated from retrieved Foley’s catheter and was found effective due to the action of silver ions. Prevention of bacterial adhesion and biofilm formation was very much evident from bacterial adhesion studies as indicated by zero viable count and absence of bacterial biofilm in fluorescent microscopic examination. Bacterial migration over silver oxide coated and uncoated Foley’s catheter was analyzed and the migration of bacteria over silver oxide coated Foley’s catheter was found to be nil. In an invitro urinary bladder model, the dynamics of ascending infection on uncoated as well as silver coated catheter was studied. Silver oxide coating of latex Foley’s urinary catheter is proved to be an ideal method of preventing CAUTI and is subjected to analysis of toxicological parameters before the development of the device for clinical trials.

Bacterial-biomaterial interaction studies revealed that the hydrodynamics of biofilm formation seem to be changed by the silver oxide coating which increased the hydrophilic nature of the catheter which eventually decreases biofilm adhesion.

A Novel Technique to Prepare Thermally Stable Hydroxyapatite

S. Prakash Parthiban,1 K. Elayaraja,1 E.K. Girija,1 G. Bocelli,2 M. Palanichamy,3 K. Asokan,4 S. Narayana Kalkura1

1 Crystal Growth Centre, Anna University, Chennai 600025, Tamil Nadu, India
2Centro di Studio per la Strutturistica Diffrattometrica CNR, CSSD-Palazzo Chimico, Parco Area delle Scienze 17/a, I-43100 Parma, Italy
3 Department of Chemistry, Anna University, Chennai 600025, Tamil Nadu, India
4 Inter-University Accelerator Center, Aruna Asaf Ali Marg, New Delhi 110067, India
E-mail: kalkura@annauniv.edu ; kalkura@yahoo.com

Synthetic hydroxyapatite (HAP) in the form of cements, biphasic ceramics and coatings is the widely used biomaterial for bone replacement applications. Synthesis of HAP must be thermally stable and must not decompose to undesirable phases like tricalcium phosphate or calcium oxide upon sintering and calcining. The properties of HAP at high temperature are important for the design of experiments in order to get stoichiometric ceramic by sintering and also for high temperature coating applications.

HAP powders were synthesized by wet chemical method. The prepared powders were treated hydrothermally in the presence of a carboxylic acid. Samples were analysed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), FT-IR, SEM, TG/DTA techniques. XRD confirmed the synthesized powder was phase pure HAP. FT-IR confirmed the adsorption of the carboxylic acid on to HAP. SEM micrographs showed rhombus-like morphology for HAP particles. Details regarding the thermal stability and structure analysis will be presented.

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