JP2005194279A - Method for inactivating microbe and apparatus for treating microbe - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a method for suppressing infectivity by sterilizing or inactivating microbes without deteriorating or damaging blood. <P>SOLUTION: An apparatus for treating microbes comprises an infrared laser oscillator, a wave length converter for the generated infrared laser, and a beam splitter for selecting laser ray of a predetermined wave length from the wave length converted laser light and constituted to sterilize or inactivate the microbes by irradiating the microbes with the laser ray having a predetermined wave length. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2005,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to a technique for inactivating microorganisms. Specifically, the microorganisms such as viruses are irradiated with infrared laser light to inactivate the viruses and the like, and the proliferation and activity thereof are stopped or suppressed to prevent infection due to the contamination of the microorganisms. The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for inactivating microorganisms to be prevented.

Background of the Invention

A common technique for removing viruses and other microorganisms and suppressing activity is heat treatment or disinfection. On the other hand, blood components are always accompanied by the risk of pathogen transfer, and the presence of viruses in the blood components, mainly the presence of hepatitis C and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), is a major problem. Other viruses, such as human T lymphocyte-loving virus type 1 (HTLV-1), hepatitis B (HBV) and cytomegalovirus are also problematic. Conventionally, photochemotherapy has been tried as one of the countermeasures in such a case.
That is, it is a method of activating these compounds by irradiating photodynamic compounds such as pseuralene, porphyrin, riboflavin and methylene blue dimethyl with long wavelength ultraviolet rays (UVA). However, such photochemical means are difficult to select compounds, determine biocompatibility, etc., and it is difficult to expect the desired effect, and it can be said that there is no problem in safety because UVA is irradiated to blood. Absent.
Thus, when the living body is infected with microorganisms, particularly viruses, it can be said that there is no realistic and effective means for removing and inactivating the virus itself so far.

On the other hand, the inventors of the present application have confirmed the fact that laser irradiation under a predetermined condition exhibits a healing effect without damaging living tissue such as blood in the development process of treatment technology using infrared laser for arteriosclerosis and the like. Based on this finding, the present invention has been completed.
The following techniques are disclosed in the following documents in relation to the present invention.

Techniques related to the present invention are disclosed in the following documents.
Special table 2004-518766 "Infrared laser for the treatment of arteriosclerosis" (Optical Alliance, May 2000, P27-29)

  An object of the present invention is to provide a technique for killing or inactivating microorganisms infected with a living body without damaging the living body. In particular, the means for killing and inactivating microorganisms present in blood are limited to means such as photoirradiation using photochemical substances, and the effect is not sufficient, and the load on blood is not small. The present invention has a simple configuration and can kill or inactivate only microorganisms without applying a load to a carrier such as a living body.

  The present invention seeks to solve the above-mentioned conventional problems by providing a microorganism inactivation method that kills or inactivates microorganisms by irradiating them with laser light.

In the above microorganism inactivation method, the microorganism carrier may become animal blood.

Furthermore, in the above microorganism inactivation method, the microorganism carrier may be composed of blood collected from a human.

Furthermore, in any one of the above-described microorganism inactivation methods, the laser beam irradiation may be pulsed laser beam irradiation, and the target microorganism may become a virus.

In any of the above microorganism inactivation methods, the wavelength of the laser beam to be irradiated may be set to 6-9 μm.

  Further, in any one of the above microorganism inactivation methods, the wavelength of the infrared laser light may be set to 6-9 μm via the wavelength conversion means and the beam splitter.

The present invention is also a microorganism treatment apparatus, comprising: an infrared laser oscillator; wavelength conversion means for an infrared laser output therefrom; and a beam splitter for selecting laser light having a predetermined wavelength from the wavelength-converted laser light. The present invention is intended to solve the above-mentioned conventional problems by providing a microorganism treatment apparatus that irradiates microorganisms with the laser beam having the predetermined wavelength to kill or inactivate the microorganisms.

Further, in the above microorganism treatment apparatus, the wavelength converting means comprises first and second optical parametric resonators, and the wavelength of the laser light output via the beam splitter is 6-9 μm effective for virus inactivation. May be set and configured.

Furthermore, in any one of the above-described microorganism treatment apparatuses, an optical fiber that transmits laser light incident from the beam splitter, and a means for irradiating blood in human or animal blood vessels with an infrared laser transmitted by the optical fiber are provided. It may be configured to irradiate or inactivate microorganisms in the blood of humans or animals.

Further, in any one of the above-described microbial treatment apparatuses, the blood treatment apparatus further includes a blood external circulation path connected to a blood vessel of a human or animal and an infrared transmission part formed in the blood external circulation path, and circulates through the infrared transmission part. In some cases, the blood is irradiated with infrared laser light having the predetermined wavelength to kill or inactivate microorganisms in the blood.

The present invention has the following effects.
(1) The microorganisms in the biological carrier can be effectively killed or inactivated without affecting the biological carrier. In particular, it has a remarkable effect on microorganisms in blood, especially viruses, for which no effective countermeasures have been found in the past.
(2) Since the structure is simple, the killing or inactivation of microorganisms can be realized quickly and easily, and the cost is low.

At present, the only effective countermeasure against hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C virus in the blood is a method of heat treating the blood, but the inventors of the present application measure blood infected with these viruses with an FTIR spectrometer. As a result, it was found that a specific absorption band was generated in the infrared region having a wavelength of 6 to 9 μm. From these findings, when irradiated with pulsed infrared rays corresponding to the wavelength of the absorption band produced by the virus, the virus was inactivated and the infectivity was suppressed without affecting the medium (blood). That is, it was confirmed that the template in the virus (template) was destroyed, or the capsule of the virus was destroyed, and the virus replication enzyme (enzyme) was destroyed.

Irradiated infrared laser light can be obtained with a free electron laser with a predetermined wavelength of 6 to 9 μm, but there are problems in terms of operation cost and maintenance cost, so the wavelength conversion is based on the compact solid-state laser Nd: YAG laser. It is desirable to adopt a system configuration that emits the wavelength-variable infrared laser light in the predetermined wavelength range by combining an optical parametric oscillator as means and a beam splitter that separates laser light of a predetermined wavelength.

Note that, in the continuous oscillation (cw) mode, the laser light is irradiated only by generating blood heating, and does not contribute to inactivation of viruses or the like, so it is necessary to perform pulse irradiation. The pulse is desirably 10 ns or less in order to prevent destruction of white blood cells, serum, etc. in the blood.
In addition, since the absorption band due to virus vibration is used, it is desirable to use the maximum absorption wavelength. The narrower the incident laser beam spectral width, the more effective, but the setting is about 100 mm in view of the system configuration.

FIG. 1 is a schematic configuration diagram of one embodiment of a microorganism treatment apparatus 5 according to the present invention. The microorganism treatment apparatus includes an infrared laser oscillator, wavelength conversion means for the infrared laser output therefrom, and a beam splitter for selecting laser light having a predetermined wavelength from the wavelength-converted laser light. In the figure, reference numeral 1 denotes an infrared laser oscillator which is constituted by an LD-pumped Nd: YAG laser oscillator and outputs a laser beam having a wavelength of 1.064 μm. Reference numeral 2 denotes a first optical parametric resonator that performs first-stage wavelength conversion on laser light having a wavelength of 1.064 μm input from the infrared laser oscillator 1, where the laser light is wavelength-converted to 2.13 μm, Output to the resonator 3 and second-stage wavelength conversion is performed.
That is, after the second-stage wavelength conversion, the laser light has a wavelength of 2.8 to 3.3 μm + 6 to 9 μm. The first parametric resonator 2 and the second parametric resonator 3 constitute an infrared laser wavelength converting means.

Infrared laser light subjected to second-stage wavelength conversion is divided into A laser light (wavelength 6-9 μm) and B laser light (wavelength 2.8-3.3 μm) in the beam splitter 4, and the virus in which the A laser light is infected with blood. It will be used for the inactivation treatment.

The following is an experimental example using the above-described processing apparatus.
Experimental example 1
(A) Several tens of samples were prepared in which a medium in which hepatitis C virus was distributed was held between ZnSe (zinc selenium infrared transmitting material) windows having a diameter of 2 ″.
(B) The sample was pulse-irradiated with a laser beam intensity of 0.1 to 10 kw / square centimeter in a wavelength range of 6 to 9 μm.
(C) As a result, under the conditions of incident light intensity of about 1 kW / square centimeter and pulse width, the virus is rapidly inactivated when the wavelength of the laser light is tuned in the range of 7.1 to 7.9 μm as shown in the graph of FIG. Confirmed to do.
Experimental example 2
(A) The laser light was irradiated under the same conditions as in Experimental Example 1, and the sample was irradiated on a sterile blood sample for transfusion (enclosed in a ZnSe cell).
(B) When ESR and NMR data were verified for the sample blood after irradiation with infrared laser light, it was confirmed that the irradiation did not affect the deterioration of blood (serum, leukocytes) and that virus was inactivated. It was.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a second embodiment of the microorganism treatment apparatus according to the present invention. In FIG. 3A, 5 is the microorganism treatment apparatus according to the first embodiment shown in FIG. 1, 6 is an optical fiber for transmitting laser light incident from the beam splitter 4 of the microorganism treatment apparatus 5, and 7 is This is means for irradiating blood in human or animal blood vessels with an infrared laser transmitted by the optical fiber 6. The irradiation means 7 is composed of a hollow needle 8 inserted at the end of the optical fiber 6 as shown in FIG. 3 (b). The hollow needle 8 is punctured into the blood vessel as shown in FIG. By irradiating the blood of this with laser light, microorganisms in the blood are killed or inactivated.

FIG. 5 is a view showing a third embodiment of the microorganism treatment apparatus according to the present invention.
In the figure, 5 is the microorganism treatment apparatus according to the first embodiment shown in FIG. 1, 9 is a blood external circulation path connected to the blood vessels of humans or animals, and 10 is in this blood external circulation path 9 It is a ZnSe (zinc selenium infrared transmission glass) cell as the formed infrared transmission part. The blood external circulation path 9 is constituted by a blood tube 11 having injection needles N at both ends and a blood pump 12 interposed in the blood tube 11. As shown in FIG. 6, blood sucked from one human injection needle N and circulated through the blood tube 11 is irradiated with an infrared laser output from the microorganism treatment device in the infrared transmission unit 10, and microorganisms in the blood are killed or not. After being activated, the blood flows through the other injection needle N via the blood pump 12 and returns to the blood vessel.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS It is schematic structure explanatory drawing which concerns on 1st Example of the microorganisms processing apparatus of this invention. It is a graph showing the relationship between the wavelength of infrared rays and microorganisms inactivation efficiency. It is schematic structure explanatory drawing which concerns on 2nd Example of the microorganisms processing apparatus of this invention. It is explanatory drawing which shows the usage condition of the microorganisms processing apparatus which concerns on 2nd Example of this invention. It is schematic structure explanatory drawing which concerns on 3rd Example of the microorganisms processing apparatus of this invention. It is explanatory drawing which shows the usage condition of the microorganisms processing apparatus which concerns on 3rd Example of this invention.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Infrared laser oscillator 2 1st optical parametric resonator 3 2nd optical parametric resonator 4 Beam splitter 5 Microorganism processing apparatus 6 Optical fiber 7, 8 Hollow needle 9 Blood external circulation path 10 Infrared transmitting part 11 Blood tube 12 Blood pump

Claims (10)

A microorganism inactivation method comprising irradiating a microorganism with laser light. The microorganism inactivation method according to claim 1, wherein the irradiation target is a microorganism in blood of an animal. 2. The microorganism inactivation method according to claim 1, wherein the irradiation target is a microorganism in blood collected from a human. 4. The microorganism inactivation method according to claim 2, wherein the laser beam irradiation is a pulse laser beam irradiation, and the irradiation target microorganism is a virus. 5. The microorganism inactivation method according to claim 1, wherein the wavelength of the laser beam to be irradiated is 6 to 9 μm. 6. The microorganism inactivating method according to claim 5, wherein the wavelength of infrared laser light is set to 6-9 [mu] m through a wavelength converting means and a beam splitter. A microorganism treatment apparatus, comprising: an infrared laser oscillator; wavelength conversion means for an infrared laser output therefrom; and a beam splitter for selecting laser light having a predetermined wavelength from the wavelength-converted laser light, the predetermined wavelength A microorganism processing apparatus that irradiates microorganisms with the laser beam of 1 to kill or inactivate microorganisms. 8. The microorganism treatment apparatus according to claim 7, wherein said wavelength converting means comprises first and second optical parametric resonators, and the laser light wavelength output through the beam splitter is 6-9 [mu] m effective for virus inactivation. A microorganism treatment apparatus characterized by being set to. 9. The microorganism treatment apparatus according to claim 7, further comprising: an optical fiber that transmits a laser beam incident from a beam splitter; and an infrared laser beam transmitted by the optical fiber to blood in human or animal blood vessels. And a microorganism treatment apparatus characterized by irradiating microorganisms in the blood of humans and animals to kill or inactivate them. The microorganism treatment apparatus according to claim 7 or 8, further comprising an external blood circulation path connected to a blood vessel of a human or an animal and an infrared transmission part formed in the blood external circulation path. A microorganism treatment apparatus, wherein the circulating blood is irradiated with infrared laser light having a predetermined wavelength to kill or inactivate microorganisms in the blood.

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