8 September, 2015:

Whenever we suffer from a wound, it is important to wrap bandage around it. Because bandages prevent bacteria from the environment to enter into the body, causing infection. But what about the bacteria that have already found their way into the scratch. Now there is such a bandage that sucks bacteria out of a wound.

A bandage under development at the Swinburne University of Technology in Australia “sucks out” bacteria from the cut, allowing them to be removed along with the bandage. Although it hasn’t been tested on human skin yet, the results can be seen on tissue-engineered skin models.

The bandage is created from a mesh of polymer filaments and each strand is so fine that it is 100 times thinner than a human hair. They are made by a technique called elctrospinning where the material is squeezed out of an electrified nozzle.

The bacterial species on which the test is being carried out are ‘Escherichia coli’ and ‘Staphylococcus aureus’, both of which are known to cause chronic wound infection.

This bandage technology might seem a bit unnecessary for our everyday playground scrapes, but for patients with compromised immune systems, its a desirable precaution as it has the potential to reduce the chance of infection in vulnerable patients whose immune systems need some backup.

This bandage technology could also have other applications than only applying to the wounds. For example, it could be used in creating filters that don’t let bacteria pass, protecting clothing or scaffolds for growing tissue contamination-free, etc. Now, the team working on this technology, on their next stage of their development, will test the bandages on human wounds.