HyProtect Antimicrobial Plasma Coating & Phage Therapy
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Silver lining in the battle!
Revision Hips are a devil’s work. Infected revisions are even worse.
Does having a good bone-cement-implant interface that can retaliate further infection sound like a miracle? OSSIS would like to say hello. They have partnered with ‘Bio-Gate’ to develop HyProtect Antimicrobial Plasma coating. This is interesting because silver is embedded via vapor deposition between layers of siloxane and doesn’t come into contact with the bone while diffusing into the region over 90 days. This avoids the issues with bone healing.
OSSIS already has well-performing customized acetabular cups covering up to pelvic dissociations. HyProtect would possibly be an excellent breakthrough to fight the biofilm. We are quite early here as animal studies have shown good results with bone healing. Further research is ongoing.
Biofilm Breakers
Of all the bacterial strains that cause bone and joint infections, the ones that form the biofilms have raised their defense against the conventional antibiotics thereby posing a significant threat to surgeons. But it will not be the case anymore with the advent of Phage Therapy for bone and joint infections.
Image courtesy: ST Abedon et al.
Phage therapy is being heavily tested for its efficacy and practical utility in day-to-day clinical practice and the results are more than just promising. Morris et al. in their study investigated the antibacterial activity of tailored bacteriophage cocktail against biofilm-associated S. aureus and found that the treatment immediately inhibited the growth of S. aureus by >98% in eight-hour cultures. Viable bacterial numbers within biofilms on titanium surfaces were significantly reduced after exposure to the Phage cocktail, in vitro. It is only a matter of time before this modality evolves into a conventional method of management of resistant joint infections.
