9 ms·
One interesting thing I've read, is that frequent disinfection (like in hospitals) actually increases the prevalence of highly resistant strains. One reason is
by 21 8y ago
One interesting thing I've read, is that frequent disinfection (like in hospitals) actually increases the prevalence of highly resistant strains.
One reason is obvious - those better adapted survive and pass on resistence genes.
But the second reason is more interesting - the disinfection will kill the lesser resistant bacterias, so the resistent ones have less competition to worry about, thus they can concentrate their evolution efforts towards resisting the disinfection. Each extra gene a bacteria carries has big costs on it's fitness, so removing the competition increases the available budget for resistance genes.
I know the article is about viruses, I don't know if viruses compete between themselves in the environment.
- patejam 8y agoWhat about just cleaning? i.e. wiping down with non-antibacterial soap. I know viruses are not bacteria, so I'm a bit off topic, but still interested.
- Fomite 8y agoCleaning removes things pretty uniformly, but also doesn't result in a sterile (or even really quasi-sterile) surface. Disinfection is a pretty important next step after cleaning.
- namibj 8y agoThere are ways to clean that are so effective that even endospores will be removed, though strong oxidative disinfectants seem to generally be more effective. Something like strong UV-C irradiation or a wash with ethylene oxide should result in the destruction of all life remaining on a washed surface.
- Fomite 8y agoUV-C irradiation generally falls under "disinfection" because if you haven't cleaned the surface of gross contaminants first, it doesn't work very well.
- namibj 8y agoBut it should be sufficient to have it be visually non-dirty. UV-C get's through a thin oily film or such non-thick coverage...
- btilly 8y agoAs long as there is a way to resist our cleaning efforts, we'll select for pathogens that succeed. And with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofilm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofilm there are ways to beat straight soap. So we're selecting for aggressively starting biofilms.
- Fomite 8y agoThis is also just the inevitable consequence of removing one species from a niche without the others - even if it doesn't encourage evolution towards resisting the disinfectant. Which is important because you see this even when using extremely effective disinfectants.