Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Plasma-activated water (PAW), produced by cold atmospheric plasma interacting with water, generates reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (RONS) with potent antimicrobial activity.While its efficacy against planktonic microorganisms has been well documented, its ability to disrupt biofilms, key drivers of infection, contamination and antimicrobial resistance (AMR), is only emerging.This short review highlights advances across medicine, food safety, surface decontamination and water treatment, with examples of how PAW enhances antiseptics, outperforms industry standard disinfectants and sanitisers, and can be used for water processing.Despite remaining gaps in standardisation, scalability, sustainability, and economics, PAW's tuneable chemistry positions it as a nextgeneration biofilm control strategy.With interdisciplinary collaboration, it could play a pivotal role in the global response to AMR. PAW: a versatile anti-biofilm strategyBiofilms are aggregated microbial communities typically encased in a protective matrix of extracellular polymeric substances.Compared with planktonic cells, biofilm-associated microbes display altered gene expression, slower growth, and enhanced tolerance, For full list of author affiliations and declarations see end of paper
Source: Microbiology Australia
DOI: 10.1071/ma25060
Author: Heema Kumari Nilesh Vyas
Language: English
Subfield: Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4416508623