A recent discovery published in Cell Reports found that a dangerous hospital superbug can digest plastic used in some sutures, stents, surgical mesh, and implants inside the body. The finding challenges the widely held belief that pathogens cannot degrade medical plastics, reports Brunel University of London.

Researchers from Brunel University of London, working with a patient-derived strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a group of bacteria responsible for most hospital infections that can resist antibiotics, discovered that the pathogen dismantles biodegradable plastic standard in modern medicine. By turning the plastic into food, the microbe may cling more stubbornly to devices and linger longer on ward surfaces.

The researchers said infection preventionists must reconsider how pathogens live in hospital environments. For example, plastics, including plastic surfaces, could be food for these bacteria. Pathogens with this ability also have the potential to survive longer in the hospital environment.

The researchers isolated the enzyme, named Pap1, from a strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa originally sampled from a patient’s wound. Tested in the lab, the enzyme degraded 78% of a plastic sample in seven days. Crucially, the bacteria could also use the plastic as its only carbon source — effectively eating it.

Researchers said this plastic-digesting power also makes the superbug more dangerous. The team proved that the broken-down plastic fragments helped it form stronger biofilms or communities of microorganisms, like bacteria, that stick together. Biofilms help bacteria overcome antibiotics and make infections harder to treat.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is on the World Health Organization’s critical priority list for new treatments and is a major cause of catheter-related urinary tract infections and ventilator-associated pneumonia, both of which involve plastic-based medical equipment.

The researchers said the implications go beyond one type of plastic, as their preliminary findings showed that other pathogens affect other types of plastics.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ended a contract with Moderna to create a vaccine to safeguard against bird flu. The announcement came last week and followed the department’s broader efforts to reevaluate vaccines. For example, as CMM reported last week, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the COVID-19 vaccine will no longer be among the recommended vaccines for pregnant women and healthy children.

The contract, worth US$590 million, was announced in mid-January, just before President Donald Trump’s second term, CNN reported. The funding was in addition to $176 million awarded by HHS last year to complete the late-stage development and testing of a pre-pandemic mRNA-based vaccine against bird flu, Reuters reported.

Moderna was studying a two-dose regimen of its bird flu vaccine. In approximately 300 healthy adults aged 18 years and older, Moderna’s mRNA-1018 vaccine demonstrated a rapid, potent, and durable immune response, the drugmaker said.

“While the termination of funding from HHS adds uncertainty, we are pleased by the robust immune response and safety profile observed in this interim analysis of the Phase 1/2 study of our H5 avian flu vaccine, and we will explore alternative paths forward for the program,” said Stéphane Bancel, Moderna CEO. “These clinical data in pandemic influenza underscore the critical role mRNA technology has played as a countermeasure to emerging health threats.”

Bird flu has infected 70 people and killed one person during the past year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Most cases are among farm workers as the virus has spread aggressively among cattle herds, poultry flocks, and other wild and domestic animals. While the current public health risk is low, the CDC is watching the situation carefully and working with states to monitor people with animal exposures. To date, no known person-to-person spread has occurred.