A Real-Life Based Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Antibacterial Fabrics in Treating Atopic Dermatitis.

Background: Antibacterial clothes are classified as a complementary treatment in line with antisepsis, although meta-studies are unable to find significant improvements of eczemas.

Methods: The antibacterial effectiveness of conventional AD clothes was compared across each other by (i) standard suspension tests for the appraisal of antibacterial products and (ii) a real-life setup of affected AD skin using colonised artificial skin, to assess if functional clothes are effective under practical wear conditions. Additionally, the interaction of the fibre types with a moisturising cream was evaluated during a real wearing situation and after domestic laundry.

Microbial alginate dressings show improved binding capacity for pathophysiological factors in chronic wounds compared to commercial alginate dressings of marine origin.

Marine alginates are well established in wound management. Compared with different modern wound dressings, marine alginates cannot prove superior effects on wound healing. Alginates from bacteria have never been studied for medical applications so far, although the microbial polymer raises expectations for improved binding of wound factors because of its unique O-acetylation.

Testing linen disinfection procedures in practice with phage-charged-bioindicators.

Purpose: Disinfecting laundry processes are essential to avoid contamination of laundering machines and linen during commercial laundry reprocessing in the health care sector. Recently a bacteriophage-charged bioindicator has been developed using MS2 as surrogate virus for testing of low-temperature disinfecting laundry processing on efficacy against viruses related to practice. This paper therefore aims to investigate application of MS2-bioindicators in chemothermal processes under practical conditions (phase 2/step 2) and in practice (phase 3).