Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 16th January 2025 Issue no. 1145
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Breakthrough antimicrobial technology with unrivalled efficacy poised to revolutionise global health policy
Primel, known for providing innovative infection prevention infrastructure, has announced impressive results from a first-of-its-kind clinical trial at Lancashire Teaching Hospital Trust of its Primel Active Hand Shield (PAHS) technology.
In the trial, PAHS demonstrated an average of 91% higher antimicrobial efficacy after one hour, compared to the current standard of care hand sanitiser at 15 minutes. This is thought to be the world's first-hand hygiene product that has both a broad spectrum of antimicrobial activity and long lasting (residual) efficacy, so providing much improved protection for patients.
Use of this innovative product will improve patient safety, addressing the current challenges of hand hygiene compliance by healthcare workers, and reduce the cost and burden of healthcare associated infections. These thought-to-be unrivalled efficacy results that include the first broad spectrum efficacy with sustained protection, that is effective against pathogens such as MRSA, Clostridium difficile and norovirus. This highlights the evolution of Primel's infection prevention solution and provides an opportunity to review national and international health policies for safer hand hygiene.
"With hospital-acquired infection rates such as Clostridium difficile currently increasing annually within UK hospitals, and the challenges of spreading antimicrobial resistance, new solutions are needed to cut infection risks in healthcare settings," explains Prof Mark Wilcox.
"The results from the Lancashire Teaching Hospital trial show Primel Active Hand Shield's superior efficacy over current alcohol hand hygiene sanitisers that are in widespread use in the NHS.
“This novel hand hygiene product offers the chance to break the infection transmission cycle and, importantly, provide increased safety for patients, healthcare professionals and visitors.
“Going forwards, infection prevention guidelines need to consider this novel way of improving hand hygiene."
The Lancashire Teaching Hospital Trust's trial results demonstrated that the application of PAHS provides users with superior protection against a broad spectrum of pathogens, including some of the most drug-resistant microbes, on immediate application and over a continuous period as well as showing less transfer of pathogens to surfaces, compared to a traditional hand sanitiser.
After immediate application Primel Active Hand Shield was 98% effective and after one hour still 92% effective, therefore maintaining protection on hands better than a standard alcohol-based hand sanitiser, which dropped its efficacy considerably from 97% to 68%, respectively in 15 minutes. In addition, Primel Active Hand Shield proved it was on average 76% more effective than traditional hand sanitisers in reducing the transmission of microbes from contaminated hands to a surface.
Dr David Orr explains further:
"In collaboration with Primel, we developed this trial to measure the immediate and residual antimicrobial activity on the hands of staff treated with Primel Active Hand Shield in comparison with an alcohol-based hand sanitiser.
"The results from this trial have been very encouraging, and the feedback from our staff was very positive. Poor hand hygiene compliance is a widespread problem in healthcare services and is nationally reported to be between 40% to 60% (NHS England GE3 Hand Hygiene Technology Scheme: rationale for inclusion section, March 2016: www.england.nhs.uk)
“The deployment of this product could dramatically reduce the infection control risk associated with poor hand-hygiene compliance, because, even if hands are decontaminated less frequently than currently recommended, the product will continue to provide protection. My hope is that we can expand the use of Primel's product more widely across the hospital and therefore start to tackle the challenge of bringing down HAI rates and importantly provide better safety & security for our patients."
Arjun Luthra, CEO of Primel, adds:
"This trial has demonstrated that Primel Active Hand Shield offers superior protection to the more traditional alcohol-based hand sanitisers thanks to our key differentiator: increased sustained efficacy against a broad spectrum of pathogens.
"By offering this innovative technology, our solution adds an additional dimension to hand hygiene, by allowing users to reduce the transmission of pathogens on surfaces by their touch to further enhance the effective stopping of the spread of pathogens.
“The next step for us is to roll out our Active Hand Shield solution throughout the NHS, whilst also implementing a change at policy level, working with all UKHSA stakeholders. Our organisation is fully focused on tackling the continued financial burden whilst reducing the patient risk of HAIs with breakthrough technology."
The innovation behind Primelis the TridAnt technology, a new antimicrobial solution which represents a paradigm shift in infection prevention and protection. Primel Hand Protection is derived from materials which are used for the medical implant market, and has been optimised to evolve hand hygiene and give the healthcare industry a fast Contact-Kill mechanism in 15 seconds combined with consistent 48-hour antimicrobial protection for skin.
The new antimicrobial technology uses 'Kill on Touch' Technology enabling users for the first time to spread protection rather than germs.
TridAnt technology is suitable to protect most surfaces including woven and non-woven fabrics as well as non-porous surfaces such as metals (nitinol) and polymers (polycarbonate and polyurethanes) for prolonged periods of time with consistent efficacy and the ability to disinfect surfaces on contact and spread protection.
12th December 2024