antibiotic resistance<\/a> rising, we urgently need ways to kill bacteria that don\u2019t depend on the very drugs those bacteria are learning to evade. Photodynamic therapy, using a light-activated dye to generate bacteria-killing molecules, is exactly that kind of targeted, resistance-independent approach. We wanted to know whether it could be delivered safely inside the abdomen during a routine minimally invasive operation, and this study is an important first step showing that it can. Our hope is that, with improved light-delivery tools, this could one day become a simple adjunct a surgeon adds during an operation to attack infection at its source.\u201d<\/p>\nNicole A. Wilson, MD, PhD, FACS, Section of Pediatric Surgery, Department of Surgery, University of Oklahoma Health Campus<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Working in a newly developed rabbit model of perforated appendicitis with peritonitis, the team delivered methylene blue PDT (MB-PDT) entirely through a laparoscopic (minimally invasive) approach: the peritoneal cavity was bathed in dilute methylene blue and then illuminated with 665-nm laser light. MB-PDT proved technically feasible and safe, with no histologic evidence of off-target injury to abdominal organs, and the team developed a prototype device to stabilize the laser fiber and prevent inadvertent thermal injury to the bowel.<\/p>\n
Although this small, exploratory in vivo cohort did not show a statistically significant reduction in bacterial burden (most likely reflecting the difficulty of delivering uniform light throughout the complex, open peritoneal cavity), MB-PDT produced strong, statistically significant killing of every bacterial species isolated from the infected animals when tested in vitro, including antibiotic-resistant organisms. The study establishes a preclinical technical platform for intra-abdominal MB-PDT and identifies optimized light delivery as the key next step toward a clinically useful, resistance-independent tool for treating intra-abdominal infection.<\/p>\n
Nicole A. Wilson, MD, PhD, FACS, is a board-certified pediatric surgeon and biomedical engineer in the Section of Pediatric Surgery, Department of Surgery, at the University of Oklahoma Health Campus and Oklahoma Children\u2019s Hospital. She leads the Wilson ECLIPSe Lab, an NIH-funded, multidisciplinary research program that develops new technologies, including imaging systems, anti-adhesion materials, light-based antimicrobial therapies, and machine-learning tools, to improve outcomes for children with surgical conditions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Timothy M. Baran, PhD, is a scientist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Imaging Sciences at the University of Rochester Medical Center, with joint appointments in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Institute of Optics. His research centers on optical imaging and photodynamic therapy, and he has pioneered the clinical use of methylene blue photodynamic therapy to treat bacterial infections, including a first-in-human trial of PDT for abdominopelvic abscesses. For this study, he led the design of the light-delivery and dosimetry strategy that made intra-abdominal treatment possible.<\/p>\n
Korry T. Wirth, MD, MS is a general surgery resident at the University of Rochester Medical Center whose research bridges pediatric surgery, biomedical engineering, and antimicrobial photodynamic therapy. Wirth earned a master\u2019s degree in biomedical engineering through the University of Rochester\u2019s Center for Medical Technology and Innovation (CMTI), a translational program centered on medical device design and development, expertise that is reflected in the prototype laparoscopic light-delivery device built for this study.<\/p>\n
Source:<\/p>\n
American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery, Inc. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Children whose appendix has burst often develop serious abdominal infections that are hard to treat and increasingly resistant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":666970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[78],"tags":[6185,222362,281659,1669,6187,3914,18,135,690,19,5963,17,96,281660,206187,7346,172,9097,92],"class_list":["post-666969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-antibiotic","tag-appendicitis","tag-appendix","tag-bacteria","tag-bacterial","tag-children","tag-eire","tag-health","tag-hospital","tag-ie","tag-imaging","tag-ireland","tag-medicine","tag-methylene-blue","tag-photodynamic-therapy","tag-preclinical","tag-research","tag-surgery","tag-therapy"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117196094713110401","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/666970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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