A New Threat Tied in to Intensive Care

Environmental selection pressures are a driving force behind adaptive processes in organisms. For instance, drug misuse is commonly blamed for the rise of multi-resistant drugs and the disposal of large amounts of nylon in India giving rise to nylonase enzymes. Whilst India has received much slack for its lay biotechnology industry’s creation of NDM-1, the spotlight has recently shifted to Thailand and its less than responsible use of antibiotics. But, it’s another sort of tie strain that UCEM is eying off as a threat.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli, are constituents of the fast growing gram negative threat that has already over taken MRSA as a major cause of sepsis. These two in particular have acquired an interesting new enzyme family, nylonase. But what is the clinical significance of nylonase? As attire worn in a clinical environment has the potential to be sullied, medical students and new graduates are encouraged to wear cheaper attire. Concurrently with this, the social construct that authority is a piece of cloth worn around one’s neck has led to the rise of the nylon tie. In this piece we report a new eco-system for a newly discovered bacterial group of clinical significance.

In keeping with tradition, the new organisms were named after the location they were first found, the Intensive Care Intern’s nylon Tie (ICT-1).

Highly specialised and adapted, ICT-1 can survive longer on nylon surfaces of neck garments. Part of this organism’s success is the scientifically proven resistance of such pieces of attire to washing. The liberation of secondary metabolites from the nylon has allowed for other bacteria to colonise the tie with greater effectiveness making the tie a “superfomite”. The offending tie has since been removed from its owner for close study at the CdrHBiscuitIII Centre for the Military Application of Nylon Ties (CCHBIIICMANT).

Draping over sinks, lavatory lids, the hospital canteen counter and festering lesions; open wounds, the nylon tie is a virtual Katamari for bacteria. The ability for the tie to act as an eclectic collector all sorts of pathogens has led the CCHBIIICMANT to believe that we may be entering the era of random carriage biowarfare, where spies embedded in hospitals wearing the latest technology neckwear may freely disseminate a country’s own in hospital germs to its hospitalised geriatrics, crippling the enemy by tripling the medical costsTM.

Meanwhile, the UCEM Committee of Medical Sociology believes that the rise of senior specialists and the correlation with wearing of bow ties may have a causal link. Because the bow tie does not touch the patient, yet gives the appearance of authority, practitioners wearing bow ties may increase their chances of promotion.