Researchers at Kao Corporation, in collaboration with the Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Japan, have developed a new formulation that, when applied to the hands, increases the antimicrobial effectiveness of the hand barrier for more than two hours. Creating products based on this formulation could help introduce new hand hygiene practices and greatly mitigate the risks of contact infection. Credit: Kao Corporation
Contact infection is among the most common ways pathogens, such as bacteria and viruses, spread from one person to another. Hand washing and disinfection are important hygiene practices to minimize the probability of catching infectious diseases. Interestingly, our hands also have a natural barrier that fights off pathogens. While this had been known to science for quite some time, the exact mechanisms by which this barrier acts on pathogens remained a mystery until recently.
In a 2021 study published in Scientific Reports, researchers from Kao Corporation, Japan, revealed