text: TUESDAY, Oct. 11 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers have developed an antimicrobial coating that can be chemically bonded to gauze bandages, socks and hospital bedding and gowns to prevent the spread of dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria.\n\nThe coating, which kills the two most common and harmful kinds of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that cause infections in hospitals, works by blocking the bacteria's ability to reach and re-colonize wounds. Bacteria should also have a tough time becoming resistant to the coating, which was designed to thwart such resistance.\n\n"These technologies are especially timely given the threats that are facing the American public, such as antibiotic-resistant bugs occurring in hospitals across the world. This has the potential to be used widely," Christopher Batich, a University of Florida (UF) professor of biomedical engineering and one of the coating's inventors, said in a prepared statement.\n\nClinical trials of the coating in gauze will be conducted at UF later this year.\n\nEach year, nearly 2 million people in the United States contract infections while they're in hospital, says the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria cause about 70 percent of those infections.