LUBRICANT

Catheter Lubricant

Reduced mobility of elderly leads to a higher use of catheters by the elderly population. High incidence of urinery tract infections after using a catheter is a result of build up of harmful bacteria. Find out how we are designing a lubricant that can detect and kill infectious bacteria leading to these problems.

The problem

Catheter Lube

Catheter lube is very commonly used when inserting urinary catheters in hospitals. As a large segment of the population receiving these urinary catheters are elderly (65+) and a lot of these catheters can result in UTIs, we have decided to develop a lube that detects and report (via a colour change) different pathogens associated with such infections. This lube would then be used to aid the insertion of catheters as well as further monitoring of the sterility.

Catheters in Practice

In hospitals nowadays it is very common to have a urinary catheter inserted to drain the bladder. Catheters can either be intermittent, where they are only inserted temporarily and removed as soon as the bladder is empty, or indwelling, where they are in place for a prolonged period of time (days or weeks. ) The NHSN (National Healthcare Safety Network) had found that in the EU around 17.5% of hospital patients need indwelling catheters: 45-79% of which were in a critical care unit, 17% in the medical ward, 23% in the surgical ward and 9% in rehabilitation .

Around about 73% of the patients receiving these catheters are above the age of 65. Now the problem arises as about 28% of these elderly patients will develop a UTI (urinary tract infection), due to the use of a urinary catheter. 60-80% of patients with indwelling catheters receive antimicrobials to counteract asymptomatic bacteriuria, which can lead to microbial resistance. In practice catheter lube is used to try to redude the risk of infection, pain, friction and general discomfort.

IrrE Concept

IrrE is a part (BBa_K729001 ) from a former UCL iGEM team, where, when E.Coli was transformed, it protected against salt, oxidative and thermal shock. In our case we would see if E.Coli transformed with IrrE is better adapted to living in lube than wild type E.Coli. If so the IrrE transformed E.Coli cells could be used as a chassi to introduce pathogen detecting and reporting systems into.

Experimental Design

The experiment to be conducted is to see whether IrrE transformed E.Coli can more readily survive in lube than wild type E.Coli. To test this firstly wilt type E.Coli will be introduced into different concentrations of lube and LB and be grown over several hours. Then the same will be done with the transformed cells and we will check whether there is a significant difference between the growth curves of the different cells in different concentrations.

"Urinary Catheterisation - NHS Choices." NHS Choices. Department of Health, n.d. Web. 9 Oct. 2016.
Nicolle, Lindsay E. "Catheter Associated Urinary Tract Infections." Antimicrob Resist Infect Control Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Control 3.1 (2014): 23. Web.
June, 2015 22, and Lakshmi Muthuraman4 March, 2016 10:32 Am. "Selecting Gel Types for Urinary Catheter Insertion." Nursing Times. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Oct. 2016.
http://parts.igem.org/Part:BBa_K729001