| Abstrakt: |
Antimicrobial textiles have emerged as a new trend, particularly in military settings, due to their capacity to reduce the risk of infection transmission, improve cleanliness, as well as promote overall health and safety. In this study, three antimicrobial solutions were chosen to be tested, which were Antimicrobials A, B and C, by applying them on three different fabric materials of Malaysian Armed Forces (MAF) clothes, which were polyester cotton, polyester and cotton. There were three potential pathogenic bacteria employed in this experiment, which were Escherichia coli (E. coli), Klebsiella pneumoniae (K. pneumoniae) and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus). The samples were categorised as treated and untreated samples, and non-fabric samples as control. The treated samples were treated with each antimicrobial solution using a spray method. Three serial dilutions were performed for all the samples using the shake flask test in saline water method. After the final 24 h of incubation, the colony forming unit (CFU) readings of the test samples for 0, 1, 3 and 24 h were counted and recorded using an automatic colony counter (Interscience Scan 4000, USA). From the results obtained, S. aureus was the highest bacteria that had been reduced by all three antimicrobial solutions. Overall, the treated samples showed higher bacterial reduction trend as compared to the untreated samples. For the treated samples, the results showed that the combination of Antimicrobials A and B, which contained titanium dioxide (TiO2) as their primarily active components, with cotton fabrics had higher efficacy in eradicating all three bacteria. It was found that the Antimicrobial A was more efficient than Antimicrobial B due to high dodecanoic acid content as additional active ingredient in Antimicrobial A that also helps to eradicate the evaluated bacteria through lytic action. For the untreated samples, the most bacterial reduction could also be seen on the cotton fabrics. In conclusion, this study found that the combination of Antimicrobial A and cotton fabrics was the most suitable pair to be used in future research for the development of MAF antimicrobial clothes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
