We’ve all heard about antibiotic resistance, but is it also possible for bacteria to develop resistance to common disinfectants, like bleach, alcohol and soap?
I was reading this story and was sort of confused as to what was going on
We’ve all heard about antibiotic resistance, but is it also possible for bacteria to develop resistance to common disinfectants, like bleach, alcohol and soap?
I was reading this story and was sort of confused as to what was going on
Pretty sure they can yes, QAC (quaternary ammonium compound) resistance. I will look in more detail later.
edit: read the paper, as Huldra pointed out well, spores are really tough in general, and are highly resistant to chemical and physical attack. This does seem to be a new finding though otherwise it would probably not have been published in this manner.
QAC’s are compounds similar to bleach but not the same, and are used in those cleaning sprays and wipes that are labelled as antimicrobial or antibacterial. They are a wide class of chemicals with a lot of different effects. What I was referring to earlier was that QAC tolerance and resistance to clinically relevant concentrations of QACs has been found in several genus of bacteria, and they have been isolated directly from hospitals. This paper is a recent review on the topic. Resistance to these compounds can arise in a few different ways, many of the same ways that resistance to antibiotics works:
seems like for now the bacteria are not resistant in this same way to things like bleach, soap and alcohol, but I’m sure there are certain species that have higher tolerance for them. I’ve read, due to how persistant and potentially harmful the QACs are, it’s best to avoid using products including them and to just use regular soap. (eg, avoid the "Kills 99.99% of bacteria antimicrobial soap) https://asm.org/Articles/2017/February/antibiotic-resistance-soap-and-false-advertising