BYU Study: Some Alcohol-Free Hand Sanitizers Effective Against COVID-19

PROVO —Since the beginning of the pandemic, many people in the United States have been working under the assumption that hand sanitizers must contain at least the recommended CDC in order to be effective in combating the new coronavirus. I’ve been doing it. 60% alcohol..

However, a new study published by a team of researchers at Brigham Young University Journal of Hospital Infection Disinfectants that use certain alternative alcohols have shown to be as effective as disinfectants that contain alcohol, thus questioning these assumptions.

The researchers tested four over-the-counter disinfectants and found that three were completely alcohol-free, each effective in stopping the virus.

“They all worked beautifully,” said Benjamin Ogilvie, a graduate student at BYU and one of the lead researchers in the treatise.

For their testing, researchers first mixed the new coronavirus with various cleaning agents one at a time, and then introduced the virus into living cells 15-30 seconds later.

Each solution inactivated the virus, even after researchers added mucus and blood protein to the solution mixture. This can distract the cleaning agent and reduce its effectiveness.

“Our goal was to see if our hands were a little dirty and still working, and that worked,” Ogilby said.

Perhaps the most notable of the successfully tested solutions is benzalkonium chloride, an ingredient used in many hand sanitizers and other cleansers.

Ogilby, who has spent years researching disinfectants, said he wasn’t surprised by the results.

“Envelope viruses like SARS-CoV-2 are very sissy, like influenza viruses. They can be killed very easily and this agent kills envelope viruses fairly well in most cases.” He said.

Prior to COVID-19, benzalkonium chloride was the main component of many common hand sanitizers.

Now people tend to shy away from products that use it.

“People were already using it before 2020,” BYU professor and co-author Brad Barges said in a press release. “During this pandemic, non-alcohol-based hand sanitizers were thrown out on the roadside as the government said,’I don’t know they work,’ because of the novelty of the virus and the unique laboratory conditions. It seems that. You need to run the test. “

Ogilby said the broad belief that alcohol-free disinfectants are less effective at blocking COVID-19 is Review paper It was released in early 2020.

“Overall, it’s a great article, because it’s very widely quoted, partly because it was early and some were really thorough,” he said. “The author of the treatise states that he is considering the only FDA-approved benzalkonium chloride that is the active ingredient in alcohol-free hand sanitizers, and that the chemical is probably against SARS-CoV-2. He said it wasn’t very effective. I think it really made all the stages. “

Several others since the paper was published article It is written expressing concern over the claim that benzalkonium chloride is not as effective as other disinfectants.

Ogilvie hopes that his team’s investigation will help provide the necessary evidence to support pushback.

“We haven’t really received much coverage yet, partly because no one has ever had the scientific results to support it,” he said.

He added that as non-alcohol-based hand sanitizers become more widely used, they will also help solve myriad supply chain problems.

“They work at very low concentrations,” he said of benzalkonium chloride disinfectants. “This makes shipping locations much easier. So shipping 10,000 gallons of alcohol is a bit of a pain, but shipping 20 gallons of benzalkonium chloride is much easier.”

It is important to note that both the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration recommend washing your hands with soap and water as the best way to prevent the spread of COVID-19.