Comparison of the effectiveness of different silver-containing textile products on bacteria and human cells

This paper reports on the antibacterial properties of several silver-containing textile products commercially available in Europe. The antimicrobial properties are evaluated against two different types of bacteria, Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. In a similar experimental set-up, the toxicity of these textile products was also investigated against three different types of human leukocytes (Jurkat, MonoMac-1, and Epstein-Barr virus-transformed human B cells). The antimicrobial activity of the textiles commercialized as antimicrobial fabrics varies in a broad range; for some fabrics, no antimicrobial activity was detectable under the applied test conditions. For comparison, the effect of some fabrics against human cells was also investigated, finding that the ones with high bactericidal activity did also impair the viability of human cells.