PLASMA RESEARCH MAY BE OF VALUE IN PREVENTION OF E. COLI EPIDEMICS

Five years ago, a company in Ohio that is a supplier of fresh, ready-to-eat vegetables, contacted ODU electrical engineer Mounir Laroussi to ask if he could use cold plasma technology to kill E. coli on green beans. Laroussi is a leading international expert in the use of cold plasmas for biomedical applications, including germ killing and sterilization.

Laroussi collaborated with colleague Wayne Hynes, now the chair of ODU's Department of Biological Sciences and whose specialty is bacteriology, to conduct tests on the bean supplied by the Ohio company. The researchers introduced E. coli to the surface of the beans and then passed them through a plasma chamber.

As it turns out, Laroussi and the ODU Laser and Plasma Engineering Institute that he directs are part of a research consortium that includes the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Germany. Soon after the E. coli outbreak was reported in Germany, Laroussi contacted colleagues there and related information about the tests five years ago at ODU.

In order for the ODU researchers to conduct more experiments with plasma decontamination, Hynes requested early in June from U.S. government disease control authorities a sample of EHEC that would be more similar to the strains that caused the deaths in Germany.

"We have every reason to believe that the cold plasma would be effective against this EHEC, but we want to make sure," Laroussi said. "The problem is, there are a lot of requests from researchers for these samples right now and it may take some time for us to acquire the germs." Laroussi said the German results, together with those obtained by him and Hynes', "give us reason to believe that we could develop, for commercial purposes, a plasma chamber through which sprouts or other vegetables could be passed through and be gently tumbled or rolled to provide full exposure to the plasma."

The ODU engineering professor pointed out that there was news this month of an E. coli outbreak in the U.S., and that in 1997 Virginia was one of two states to report an outbreak of sickness traced to E. coli on alfalfa sprouts. "So this is a problem close to home, as well. We at ODU should definitely be looking for solutions," he said.