Transfer of bacteria from fabrics to hands and other fabrics: development and application of a quantitative method usingStaphylococcus aureusas a model

Abstract

Aims: To develop and apply a quantitative protocol for assessing the transfer of bacteria from bleached and undyed fabrics of 100% cotton and 50% cotton + 50% polyester (poly cotton) to ®ngerpads or other pieces of fabric. Methods and Results: Test pieces of the fabrics were mounted on custom-made stainless steel carriers to give a surface area of 1 cm in diameter, and each piece seeded with about 10 5 cfu of Staphylococcus aureus from an overnight broth culture; the inoculum contained 5% fetal bovine serum as the soil load. Transfer from fabric to fabric was performed by direct contact using moist and dry fabrics. Transfers from fabrics to ®ngerpads of adult volunteers were tested using moist, dry and re-moistened pieces of the fabrics, with or without friction during the contact. Bacterial transfer from fabrics to moistened ®ngerpads was also studied. All the transfers were conducted under ambient conditions at an applied pressure of 0á2 kg cm )2 . After the transfer, the recipient ®ngerpads or fabric pieces were eluted, the eluates spreadplated, along with appropriate controls, on tryptic soy agar and the percentage transfer calculated after the incubation of the plates for 24 h at 37°C. Conclusions: Bacterial transfer from moist donor fabrics using recipients with moisture 1 was always higher than that to and from dry ones. Friction increased the level of transfer from fabrics to ®ngerpads by as much as ®vefold. Bacterial transfer from poly cotton was consistently higher when compared with that from all-cotton material. Signi®cance and Impact of the Study: The data generated should help in the development of better models to assess the role fabrics may play as vehicles for infectious agents. Also, the basic design of the reported methodology lends itself to work with other types of human pathogens.

Azetidinium Functionalized Polytetrahydrofurans: Antimicrobial Properties in Solution and Application to Prepare Non Leaching Antimicrobial Surfaces

“…Since the preparation of antimicrobial textiles is regarded as a promising means to minimize hospital-acquired infections due to a reduction of bacterial spread [18,19], for our current study we chose textile fabrics as model surfaces: cotton as cellulose based surface and polyester-poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET).The advantage of the approach reported here is that: (i) antimicrobial polymers used in the current work were prepared using simple one pot reactions in water without using any catalyst, starting from cheap and commercially available starting materials; (ii) the textiles were coated with the polymers following a padding procedure used in industry; (iii) the presence of 0.5 %owf-1 %owf (on weight-of-fabric (owf)) polymers on the textile surface makes the whole textile very efficient (99.99% bacterial growth inhibition before and after repeated washings). …”

Dynamics of staphylococcal enterotoxin production in model experiments simulating the fresh cheese environment

“…S. aureus is the major causative agent of mastitis in cows (Rabello et al 2007) and have been detected in milk and milk products (Morandi et al 2009;Ertas et al 2010). Skin microflora on workers' hands can be a secondary bacteria food contaminant (Sattar et al 2001). During the production, storage, and distribution of milk and dairy products, bacteria can proliferate and subsequently produce staphylococcal enterotoxins (SEs).…”

A model of the transmission of micro-organisms in a public setting and its correlation to pathogen infection risks

“…However, even with real hands, varying transfer rates will be yielded in practice. It was previously shown that the transmission of micro-organisms is highly dependent on the degree of moisture on the hands as well as of recipient surfaces, with the transfer of bacteria always being significantly greater between moistened hands and objects than for dry ones (Marples and Towers 1979;Sattar et al 2001).…”