适得其反? 消毒剂让细菌变得更强

Now from the Boston Museum of Science, Scitech Today on NECN.

Well, you may have heard the myth, but do all of those antibacterial products really make bacteria stronger? Joining us now from the Museum of Science, Boston is Dr. Duane Hill. Good to have you here.

Oh good morning. How are you?

I’m good. So are we talking about, you know, what you spray on your kitchen counter and wipe up?

Sort of, I mean, a lot of those common household disinfectants, ur, that we think of things like Lysol or even things like wet wipes, things like that, have disinfectants in them. There’s one research. There’s one piece of research that was on in Ireland not too long ago, looked at a common disinfectant called benzalkonium chloride which is the disinfectant that we find in wet wipes, things like Lysol and a lot of those products, even cosmetics that we use everyday.

Ok,and the findings are interesting.It was actually making the bacteria grow stronger.

Exactly. What they did was they exposed these bacteria, a kind of bacterium called Pseudomonas, it causes a lot of different health conditions in humans. They exposed these bacteria to this benzalkonium chloride,  this just infecting for only about a month. And what they found was that the bacteria became not only more resistant to the disinfectant itself but also to the antibiotic Sypro. So the bacteria kind of got a two for one learning by being exposed to this common disinfectant.

And why does that happen?

Well, I mean, when you think about it, a lot of the things that we have at our disposal, disinfectants, antibiotics are poisons from the point of view of the bacteria. And bacteria have these little things calls efflux pumps. Just little pumps that the cells use, we actually use them ourselves, different ones to pump poisons out of their cells. And what they think was happening is that the bacteria that could figure out how to defend themselves against this disinfectant also use those same pumps to protect themselves against the antibiotic sypro.

Does that mean you should throw away your little wet wipes?

Absolutely not. No one is saying that we should stop using disinfectants. Disinfectants are really important part of our arsenal against bacteria. But I think what the research is suggesting is that physicians, public health professionals, we ourselves need to kinda think about what some of the side-effects might be from these disinfectants and not just grab them and use them so indiscriminately. We need to kind of think about it.

Woo it's interesting, Dr. Duane Hill, thank you so much for joining us this morning.

Oh, my pleasure!

And you'll be sure to join us every Thursday morning at this time for Scitech Today. You can also log on to the  Museum of Science website at MOS.ORG

Terms:benzalkonium chloride【有机化学】杀藻胺 抗菌及防腐作用

            Pseudomonas 假单胞菌属

          Lysol （来沙尔）是种消毒液