Antimicrobial coated needle-free connector
Abstract:
Needle-Free connectors (NFCs) are widely used to access vascular infusion circuits. Despite their safety benefits, NFCs still present risks for colonization and vascular ingress by pathogenic microbes. Antimicrobial NFCs present one approach to prevent microbial colonization over all colonizable surfaces of NFCs with the advantage of potentially protecting the entirety of vulnerable internal and external NFC surfaces. In this study, we compared a commercially available silver coated NFC against a novel Minocycline (M), Rifampin (R) and Chlorhexidine (C) coated NFC in an in vitro model posing a severe microbial challenge following one and seven days of elution in a 50% serum solution to simulate clinical use of the NFCs. Microbial challenges were performed against clinical isolates of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Candida albicans as representative of the major classes of highly virulent bloodstream infectious pathogens. Results following one day of elution showed colonization of uncoated NFCs of 4.45×106 CFU/NFC for MRSA, 5.20×106 CFU/NFC for C. albicans and 3.68×107 CFU/NFC for P. aeruginosa. The silver NFC presented approximately a 1 log10 reduction for P. aeruginosa and similar colonization densities as the control for MRSA and C. albicans. In contrast, the MRC NFC showed no colonization by any of the challenge pathogens. Similar results were obtained following seven days of elution. The differences between the MRC and silver NFC were statistically significant (p < 0.005). The MRC NFC potentially can reduce line infections and therefore merits further in vivo and clinical testing.
Reference:
Truong YL, Rosenblatt J, Gerges B, Jiang Y, Raad I. Comparative In Vitro Antimicrobial Activity of a Silver and Minocycline-Rifampin-Chlorhexidine Coated Needle-Free Connector. J Hosp Infect. 2025 Apr 25:S0195-6701(25)00102-1. doi: 10.1016/j.jhin.2025.04.012. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 40288584.