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Efficacy of five alcohol-based skin antiseptics on sebaceous skin used at shorter application times than the current recommendation of 10 minutes

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Abstract

Alcohol-based skin antiseptics are recommended with a minimum application time of 10 min on skin containing high numbers of sebaceous glands. In clinical practice, a 10-min application time is often too long. Therefore, we determined the efficacy of skin antiseptics on the forehead and lower back using shorter application times. Five alcoholic solutions were tested in a double-blind trial for their colony-forming units (cfu) reduction after 3, 4, 5 and 10 min on the forehead of 20 healthy volunteers and the lower back of 10 healthy volunteers and 10 patients against the reference alcohol 70% propan-2-ol, 10 min. After an application time of 3 min, 3/5 (forehead) and 5/5 (lower back) preparations were at least equally as effective compared to the reference alcohol and an application time of 10 min. Alcohol-based skin antiseptics do not require a 10-min application time. For all of the tested antiseptics, a minimum application time of 3 min on sebaceous skin can be recommended.

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Abbreviations

TSB:

Tryptic soy broth

TSA:

Tryptic soy agar

cfu:

Colony-forming units

log10 RF:

Logarithmic reduction factor

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Competing Interests

The study was sponsored by Bode Chemie GmbH & Co. KG, Hamburg, Germany, and Antiseptica chem.-pharm. Produkte GmbH, Pulheim/Brauweiler, Germany. The sponsors had no participation in the study design, analysis and interpretation of the data. The authors declare no competing interests.

Authors’ contributions

N-OH, SAG and AK designed the study; N-OH, OA, MD-E and SAG analysed the data; OA, N-OH, MD-E and AK wrote the manuscript. All of the authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Hygiene and Environmental Medicine, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University Greifswald, Walther-Rathenau-Straße 49A, 17489, Greifswald, Germany

    N.-O. Hübner & A. Kramer

  2. Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany

    S. A. Grohmann

  3. Department of Hospital Hygiene, Medical University of Vienna, Waehringer Guertel 18-20, 1090, Vienna, Austria

    O. Assadian & M. Diab-Elschahawi

Authors
  1. N.-O. Hübner
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  2. O. Assadian
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  3. S. A. Grohmann
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  4. M. Diab-Elschahawi
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  5. A. Kramer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to O. Assadian.

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Hübner, NO., Assadian, O., Grohmann, S.A. et al. Efficacy of five alcohol-based skin antiseptics on sebaceous skin used at shorter application times than the current recommendation of 10 minutes. Eur J Clin Microbiol Infect Dis 30, 825–829 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10096-010-1085-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10096-010-1085-x

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