A proposed alternative to alcohol-based sanitizers

[sparkyvision]

Hello, microbiologists!

 

I was having this discussion with a friend and I thought I remembered reading a paper about how it wouldn't work, but I couldn't remember where I read it.

 

The question is this. Different types of bacteria tend not to colonize the same surface, right? Instead of constant hand-washing or re-applying alcohol-based gels, could you use a sort of...benign bacterial yogurt to encourage just the benign bacteria to live on your hands? Would that be an efficacious way to prevent colonization with whatever random bacteria one is likely to pick up? The hand gels work, and don't contribute to antibacterial resistance so far as we know, but tend to be drying. So after gelling them once, you could apply benign bacteria to keep other stuff from trying to colonize your hands...sort of a effectiveness extender.

 

Obviously this would only be for day-to-day hand-cleaning, you'd still need to follow standard precautions for times when sterility was needed. Could this work?

Edited August 20, 2010 by sparkyvision

[Mr Skeptic]

Well, usually the problem is not stuff colonizing your hands but just sitting there until you touch something, a food, your mouth, pick your nose, rub your eye, etc., or a doorknob to leave it for someone else. There's probably no way to make your hands deadly to bacteria without doing some really foolish or nasty things. So, washing occasionally is the way to go.

 

Also, antibiotic resistant bacteria tend to be resistant to sanitizers, it goes with the niche.

[John Cuthber]

I doubt this statement "antibiotic resistant bacteria tend to be resistant to sanitizers".

Bacteria that waste resources being resistant to, for example, penicillin, will be less able to resist other poisons like the alcohol in skin cleaners.

[ewmon]

Instead of constant hand-washing or re-applying alcohol-based gels, could you use a sort of...benign bacterial yogurt to encourage just the benign bacteria to live on your hands?

Having worked in biopharma, our team studied sanitizers and found that frequently using alcohol-based sanitizers tends to dry out the skin, makes it crack etc. Try other sanitizers, perhaps those with Triclosan. The odd thing to me about alcohol is that I know it technically as a "bacteriostat" and not a "bacteriocide", so it'll stop bacteria from growing, but it won't kill them.

[Mr Skeptic]

I doubt this statement "antibiotic resistant bacteria tend to be resistant to sanitizers".

Bacteria that waste resources being resistant to, for example, penicillin, will be less able to resist other poisons like the alcohol in skin cleaners.

 

Hm, I got that from an article that seems to have given me a somewhat distorted picture. However, people are concerned about this:

 

http://jmm.sgmjournals.org/cgi/reprint/48/7/613.pdf

Increased resistance of bacteria to antiseptics and

disinfectants is not a clinical problem at present. The

issue as to whether low-level resistance to these agents

is a selection factor for antibiotic-resistant strains in the

clinical and domestic environments has yet to be

settled [16]. However, mutations in the inhA gene of

Mycobacterium smegmatis results in resistance to both

triclosan and isoniazid [17] and this must be considered

as being a matter for concern.

 

The problem is that in some cases resistance to one thing can imply resistance to other things, usually via limited uptake resistance.