New research suggests that PPE made from electrochemical fibers may offer better protection against COVID-19

Personal protective equipment (PPE) plays a major role in reducing the risk of COVID-19 infection in health care workers. However, viruses can remain on the surface (including PPE viruses), so there is a great risk of getting the virus while wearing and removing the device.

Currently, a team of researchers at the Center for Regenerative Medicine and Engineering at Indiana and the School of Medicine and Molecular Genetics at Indiana University School of Medicine say that electrical fabrics can kill COVID-19 when used to make PPE. Virus in about 1 minute. Electropharmaceuticals are usually devices that use an electric charge to treat or manage a disease.

Electropharmaceutical bandages are currently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of open wounds and are commercialized by Vomaris Inc.

of Investigation Currently in preprint stage and not yet peer reviewed.

the study

According to this study, a virus’s potential for infection depends on how stable its structure is. Various factors determine the structural stability of the virus-nonspecific electrostatic interactions are one such factor.

The virus is an intracellular parasite. The virus lives in healthy host cells and uses cellular machinery to make copies of itself. Viruses usually have a positively charged outer protein coat called the capsid, which wraps and protects the negatively charged DNA / RNA inside. These charges must be balanced so that the virus can maintain its structure intact and infect host cells.

Developed by scientists at the Indiana Medical College, electrochemical fibers create a weak electric field that destabilizes the electrical balance (and thus structure) of the virus, making it unable to cause infections.

This fabric consists of a polyester fabric interspersed with alternating silver and zinc batteries, which creates a small battery that activates when exposed to moisture from the body to create an electric field. To further ensure the efficiency of the cloth, the team used an control, sham cloth, which is another polyester cloth without metal dots.

Next, both fabrics were exposed to SARS-CoV-2 (a virus that causes COVID-19) in the laboratory.

result

Samples obtained from electrical fabrics after 1 and 5 minutes had a 2-fold and 4-fold reduction in virus numbers.

The viruses recovered from both the electrochemical and fake cloths were then tested in laboratory culture for infectivity.

Cultures containing virus from the fake were found to exhibit normal cytopathic effects (CPE, changes in cell structure caused by viral infection) when SARS-CoV-2 infects healthy cells. On the other hand, cells treated with virus isolated from the electric cloth did not show CPE, indicating that the virus has lost its infectivity.

Chandan Sen, director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine and Engineering at Indiana and lead author of the study, pointed out the importance of this study in the press release. This was the first evidence to show that it could use the physical properties of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to negate it under the weak electric fields generated by electrical fabrics.

Vomaris Inc CEO Mike Nagel said the results of this study are very encouraging and have great promise in controlling COVID-19 and other viral infections. Microcell batteries can be incorporated into a wide variety of fabrics, which could usher in new ways of thinking about PPE.

For more information, see the following article. PPE in different areas of the hospital..

The Firstpost Health Article is produced by myUpchar.com, India’s first and largest resource for validated healthcare information. At myUpchar, researchers and journalists work with doctors to provide all health information.

Update: May 25, 2020 14:37:40 IST

tag:

Coronavirus,

COVID-19 (New Coronavirus Infection) (# If there is no character limit, add parentheses when first appearing,

Electric cloth,

Indiana University,

Mupture,

New research,

Personal protective equipment,

PPE,

SARS-CoV-2