Introduction: Orthoses are rigid, semi-rigid or soft devices, attached to external part of the body. Under the rigid part of orthoses there is a textile material, which makes wearing of the orthosis more comfortable. These materials are in constant contact with the skin, that makes them more exposed for bacterial adhesion from skin microbiota. Microorganisms that inhabit human skin represent our natural microbiota. Bacterial adhesion to the surfaces of materials is conditioned by a number of factors such as: zeta potencial, roughness and hydrophobicity of the material and is also affected by the characteristics of the bacterias. Purpose: Determine how many and what kind of bacterias are found in the natural skin microbiota. To determine how zeta potencial and hydrophobicity of the materials affect adhesion of bacterial from the surface of the skin. Comparing results and decide which of five materials is more resistant to bacterial adhesion and compare those results with other literature. Methods: Five different materials that are used in production of orthoses, were used for the research: Neoprene, Nylon, Lycra, xDRY and Bamboo Fibers. We measured zeta potencial and determined hydrophobcitiy for these materials, which were then attached to three different places on the skin within three different experiments. On the same places we also took a wet swab. Materials were attached for 12 hours and then imprinted in blood agar for 30 seconds. The samples were incubated for 24 hours at 37°C, after that bacterial colonies were counted.Results: The highest zeta potencial was on Bamboo fibers, followed by Nylon, Lycra, xDRY and the lowest potencial was measured on Neoprene. Neoprene and xDRY are hydrophobic materials, where xDRY has a higher contact angle. Other three materials are hydrophilic, so we determined how quckly the materials are absorbing a drop of water. The most hydrophilic materials is Bamboo fiber, next is Nylon and the least hydrophilic is Lycra. The avarage number of adhered bacterias ranged from 0 to 2 colonies per application Discussion and conclusion: On average, less than one colony of bacteria adhered to every material. The number of adhered bacterias was the lowest on Neopren, which also had the most negative zeta potencial. And the largest number of adheres bacterias was on Nylon. However the number of colonies on all materials remained low in comparison with the number of colonies on wet swabs. From the obtained results we can conclude that the materials are sutable for use in orthotics.
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