Antimicrobial wipes may spread bugs

Disinfectant wipes routinely used to prevent the spread of infectious pathogens in hospitals may actually help to spread bacteria rather than remove or kill them, British researchers have suggested.

In a study presented in Boston, at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, Gareth Williams, a microbiologist at Cardiff University, and colleagues said poorly used wipes may do more harm than good.

"What we have found is there is a high risk," Williams, who led the study, said. "We need to give guidance to the staff on how to use the wipes because we found there is a possibility of cross transfer."

Williams and colleagues observed the staff in two intensive care units as they regularly used the wipes to disinfect hospital rooms.

"We saw that there was a tendency to use one wipe on consecutive surfaces, such as bed rails, computer monitors, and keyboards," Williams said.

The researchers replicated this cleaning technique in tests designed to measure the wipes' effectiveness in removing and destroying the bacteria that cause staph infections.

While many of the wipes tested did remove large numbers of bacteria from contaminated surfaces, they also commonly transferred live bacteria to uncontaminated surfaces when used in more than one place. Even some wipes that claimed to kill bacteria were found to transfer live bacteria from one surface to another, the researchers report.

"Many of the wipes were effective, but the message is that they have to be used properly," Williams says. "We found that the most effective way to prevent the risk of MRSA spread in hospital wards is to ensure the wipe is used only once on one surface.

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