We’ve all heard about antibiotic resistance, but is it also possible for bacteria to develop resistance to common disinfectants, like bleach, alcohol and soap?
I was reading this story and was sort of confused as to what was going on
We’ve all heard about antibiotic resistance, but is it also possible for bacteria to develop resistance to common disinfectants, like bleach, alcohol and soap?
I was reading this story and was sort of confused as to what was going on
Based on my rudimentary understanding of this stuff from being in the middle of a trade school sterile technician program, what this sounds like to me is that they are discovering that bleach is not working on spores of antibiotic resistant bacteria, but not that it used to work and now it doesnt, they just assumed that disinfectants were sufficient.
What I am being taught right now is that bacterial spores, being in essence a mechanism to protect the bacteria by going dormant and forming a shell around itself, can only be properly and acceptably dealt with by flat out sterilization, this means either a process like subjecting them to
90c degree heat inan autoclave or similar for instruments, or some really fucked up strong chemicals to sterilize larger surfaces.For context, the acceptable perimeters that I have been taught for disinfection vs sterilization is that for every 1000 things you disinfect, its acceptable to find 1 microorganism in these 1000. For sterilization this becomes 1 in 1,000,000.
Im not gonna be dealing with any fabrics to my knowledge, but the guidance Ive received on my work attire is that it only has to be subjected to regular 60c degree washes, same as underwear. I would have to go back and look at more material but patient gowns and such might just fall into a category of better safe than sorry and just make them single use if this is a concern? Unless the gowns can hold up to sterilization procedures.
Edit: Looked through my material Ive received so far and theres nothing about fabrics but plastics like gloves or plastic gowns are just flat out single use then recycle or burn. Googled a bit and I found some US studies about autoclaving single use gowns that were not visibly dirty or contaminated, but this was in the context of pandemic supply line issues so as to maintain some degree of operations.
I would assume that gowns made out of fabric are more tolerant of that but being stuck in an autoclave is gonna be rough either way.
Edit2: also disregard my 90c comment, Im mixing up procedures cause its past my bedtime, thats for disinfection in a washer-disinfector that we’re currently being taught about, autoclaves are way hotter than that, above the boiling point of water(cause its steam, duh.)
Also to give my just gut feeling answer to the question, the spore stage already is a form of resistance to disinfectants for bacteria, we just have fairly reliable ways to deal with that anyways. The big problem with antibiotics resistance is that antibiotics are what we use to kill bacteria in living things, living things that cannot just be blasted with hot steam, radiation or fucked up chemicals until nothing lives there anymore.
https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.001418
Found the actual study as well for anyone interested, and they do bring up the use of >100c degree moist heat to deactivate these spores, but note that it can destroy the hydrophobic properties of PPE fabrics, which instead would make them a transmission risk for future contaminants that stick to the gowns.
Making a third reply to also say that in terms of what needs to be sterile and what needs to be disinfected, the only things that are held to the standard of sterile are things that are involved when something is entering the body, like for surgery, needles going inside you, open wounds etc.
For most everything else disinfected or even just clean to the naked eye is considered up to standard, the big issue here was that they were apparently disinfecting surgical gowns and not sterilizing them or treating them as single use.