Antimicrobial Efficacy of Trushield™ Gloves: an In vitro Experimentation-Based Review

Wearing gloves in hospital setting protect the public and healthcare workers from pathogen transmission and associated diseases. Recently, the concept of antimicrobial gloves has been emerged. In the present study, we evaluated and compared the antibacterial efficacy of Trushield™ gloves to that of sterile surgical latex gloves. Inoculums of differential microbes (gram-positive bacteria, gram-negative bacteria, yeast, and fungus) with the final concentration of 1 × 10⁸ colony forming units (CFU)/mL were obtained. The tested glove swatches were inoculated with a microbial sample in a Petri plate, followed by incubation for different time periods (0, 5, 10, 30, 60, 240, and 480 minutes (min)). The sample was processed in duplicate. The microbial colonies were counted and log reduction was calculated. A p value of < 0.05 was set for statistical significance. At 0 min, both Trushield™ and latex gloves demonstrated the growth of differential microbes in the range of 5.6 × 10⁵ to 7.8 × 10⁵ CFU/mL. The growth of all test microorganisms was significantly impeded with the Trushield™ glove sample in a time-dependent manner (p < 0.05). Moreover, Trushield™ antimicrobial gloves achieved the value of zero CFU/mL in 1 hour (h), as compared to sterile latex surgical gloves (p < 0.05). Furthermore, Trushield™ antimicrobial gloves demonstrated antimicrobial efficacy to the extent of 2 log reduction at 5 min, 3 log reduction at 10 min, 4 log reduction at 30 min, and > 4 log reduction at 1 h and beyond. Trushield™ gloves could be a promising and user-friendly advancement in the healthcare sector by providing additional protection against pathogens.