By Healthcare Facilities Today

Infections may be getting two surprise foes as researchers investigate copper surfaces and cold plasma as weapons against bacteria, according to a DotMed News article.

When a bacterium falls on copper surfaces, its biological processes are interupted, according to research by the ECRI Institute in Pennsylvania.

"The health care application is relatively new, but way back in India cultures used copper vessels and didn't get sick," Elke Nelson, assistant manager of health tech forecast service at ECRI, told DOTmed News. "They just knew. Now we're starting to examine those properties in the health care space." 

At the same time, researchers at Texas A&M University are exploring the effects of plasma - the ionized gas used in florescent lights - in infection control. 

"We tested infectious bacteria, and basically what we find is these cold plasma reactive species react with these bacterial cell surfaces and basically rupture," said Magesh Thiyagarajan, director of Plasma Engineering Research Lab (PERL) at Texas A&M. "Then you're looking at instant sterilization." 

Read the article.