Comparative efficacies of commonly used disinfectants and antifungal pharmaceutical spray preparations against dermatophytic fungi.

Arthroconidia from five fungal strains belonging to three Trichophyton species, Trichophyton mentagrophytes, T. raubitschekii and T. tonsurans, were tested against commercial chemical disinfectants and pharmaceutical antifungal agents. The chemical disinfectants included chlorine, phenol, sodium dodecyl sulphate and several quaternary ammonium salts, while the two pharmaceutical preparations contained bifonazole and terbinafine as active agents. Arthroconidia were exposed to the antifungal agent either in a suspension solution for a given period of time and assayed for kill rate, or on a sprayed agar plate and monitored for surviving colonies over a period of 14 days. Chlorine (1%) and terbinafine (0.01%) were found to be high level disinfectants bringing about a rapid inactivation of conidia in all five strains. Phenol was equally effective against T. raubitschekii and T. tonsurans; however, T. mentagrophytes cells were able to survive for up to 1 h in 5% phenol. Quaternary ammonium compounds were less rapid in their action against dermatophytes and were needed at a level of about 0.5% to be completely fungicidal. Three commercial spray formulations with a range of 0.1 to 0.3% quaternary ammonium salts were fungistatic against T. mentagrophytes strains. Bifonazole (1%) was also fungistatic in its action against T. mentagrophytes. Sodium dodecyl sulphate (0.5%) was largely ineffective against Trichophyton arthroconidia.