Gold rods burn bacteria on implants

In the fight against antibiotic resistance, a new technology developed at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden could be of great importance, for example, when hip and knee implants are surgically inserted. By heating small gold nanorods with near-infrared light (NIR), bacteria are killed and the surface of the implant becomes sterile. The researchers are now presenting a new study that improves understanding of how the gold rods are affected by light and how their temperature can be measured.

Infections can occur during surgical procedures. The risk increases significantly when foreign bodies such as knee prostheses are implanted into the body. The presence of these substances weakens the body's immune system and often requires antibiotic treatment. High doses of antibiotics and long treatment times, sometimes lifelong, are often required for infections. This carries the risk of increased antibiotic resistance, which is considered by the WHO to be one of the greatest threats to human health.

In the technology developed by researchers at Chalmers, nanometer-sized gold rods are attached to the implant surface. When near-infrared light (NIR) hits the implant surface, the rods heat up and act as tiny heating elements. Because the heating elements are so small, very localized heating occurs, killing all bacteria on the implant surface without heating the surrounding tissue.

"The gold rods absorb the light, the electrons in the gold are set in motion, and finally, the nanorods emit heat. You could say that the gold nanorods function like small frying pans that fry the bacteria to death," says Maja Uusitalo, a doctoral student at Chalmers and lead author of the study, published in the journal Nano Letters.

Source:

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c03472

LabNews Media LLC

The Editors in Chief of labnews.ai are Marita Vollborn and Vlad Georgescu. They are bestselling authors, science writers and science journalists since 1994.More details about their writing on X-Press Journalistenbüro (https://xpress-journalisten.com).More Info on Wikipedia:About Marita: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marita_Vollborn About Vlad: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_Georgescu

See Full Bio