ANTIBACTERIAL EFFICACY OF COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE HERBAL AND ALCOHOL BASED HAND SANITIZERS- AN IN VITRO STUDY

Introduction Hand sanitizers significantly increase the chance of keeping the hands clean and aseptic.Traditionally, microbes habitation on hands is divided into resident and transient floras. Involved resident floras are commonly Staphylococcus aureus and Enterococcus faecalis that colonize the deeper skin layers and are resistant to mechanical removal. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to evaluate and compare the antimicrobial efficacy of four different hand sanitizers against Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli Materials and methods: The present study is an in vitro study to evaluate antimicrobial efficacy of Palmolive, Lifebuoy, Spar and Margo hand sanitizers against clinical isolates of the aforementioned test organisms. The well variant of agar disk diffusion test using Mueller-Hinton agar was used for evaluating the antimicrobial efficacy of hand sanitizers. After incubation, antimicrobial effectiveness was determined using a digital caliper (mm) by measuring the zone of inhibition. Results Assessment of antimicrobial effectiveness among herbal and alcohol based hand sanitizers revealed that in all cases herbal based hand sanitizers(group III Spar-20mm and IV Margo-16mm) showed maximum efficacy against bacteria as much as the alcohol based sanitizers. Conclusion Herbal hand sanitizers possessed maximum antimicrobial effect against all the Bacteria's used in the study. Despite the claims of efficacy and 99.9% bacterial reduction by hand sanitizer manufacturers, there still exists a need for verification of these claims by regulatory bodies and higher authorities for the enforcement of good-quality measures