The efficacy of commercial decontamination agents against a variety of bacterial species in a research laboratory setting

We tested five commonly used commercial decontamination agents (bleach, Chemgene HLD4L, Prevail, TriGene Advance, and Virkon) against a range of bacterial species to determine their efficacy under real-world laboratory conditions. We used Acinetobacter baumannii, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella oxytoca, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa as representative Gram-negative organisms. We used Bacillus spizizenii (formerly B. subtilis subspecies spizizenii) and Staphylococcus aureus as representative Gram-positive species. We also tested four Mycobacterial species, Mycobacterium abscessus, M. marinum, M. smegmatis, and M. tuberculosis.

We incubated each bacterium with doubling dilutions of each decontamination agent for holding times of 10, 30, 60, 240, or 1440 minutes and then determined the Minimum Bactericidal Dilution Factor (MBDF) for each bacterium/decontaminant/time combination. The MBDF is the greatest dilution of disinfectant returning no visible bacterial growth. Due to the different recommended dilutions for the decontamination agents, an Effective Ratio was calculated for each bacterium/decontaminant/time combination by dividing the MBDF by the recommended dilution.

An effective ratio of 1 indicates an agent is active at the recommended dilution. A ratio greater than 1 indicates that a decontamination agent is active at a dilution more dilute than recommended. An effective ratio lower than 1 indicates that the agent is not active at the recommended dilution.

Dataset contains MBDF values for each replicate sample (n=3-5).