Blue Light Offers Cure For MRSA And Other 'Superbugs'

Twenty-three thousand people die in the U.S every year due to antimicrobial bacteria, or superbugs. A Purdue University researcher says he may have found a way to deal with one of the worst.

MRSA is responsible for 11,000 American fatalities each year. But Mohamed Seleem, a professor of veterinary medicine, has a surprising solution: ten seconds of blue light exposure.

He says new treatments are necessary because drug companies have spent less since the 1980s trying to combat common illnesses.

“Pharmaceutical companies actually abandoned the field of making new antibiotics because it does not bring money," Seleem says. "They are more interested in chronic diseases-- drugs people take every day.”

Blue light treatment weakens MRSA and diabetic ulcers by stripping them of their pigment, which allows some to be cured by dosing with common hydrogen peroxide. Seleem says he hopes to eventually mass-market a product people can keep in their purse or pocket. But first he needs to do human testing, and then he’d like to get hospitals to adopt his technology, because that’s the most common place people catch MRSA.