Antimicrobial composition

#The present invention relates to an antimicrobial composition. It particularly relates to an antimicrobial composition for personal cleaning, oral care or hard surface cleaning applications.

#Sanitizing and disinfecting soap compositions comprising chlorine-based antimicrobial agent such as triclosan are known. Such compositions require rather long contact time to provide efficacious antimicrobial action. In practice, users, in particular children, do not spend long time in cleaning and as a result, cleaning with such compositions does not provide adequate prevention from surface or topical infection or adequate protection against diseases. The user, in spite of cleaning hands, is likely to have skin with relatively inadequate bacterial removal and may cause contamination of further animate and/or inanimate surfaces and lead to spreading of pathogens and consequent diseases. Users in general and children in particular who wash contaminated hands before meals with slow-acting antimicrobial compositions for relatively short time are at risk of contacting diseases. Further, many antimicrobial actives in addition to abrasives are included in oral care compositions like dentifrices but these actives generally require several minutes if not hours before effective antimicrobial action is effected. People often brush their teeth or rinse their mouth for very short periods of time e.g. of the order of 1 minute or less, thus making such compositions quite ineffective in providing the desired benefit.

#Similarly in the area of hard surface cleaning, e.g. cleaning of floors, table tops or utensils, the antimicrobial in the compositions are in contact with the substrate for less than a few minutes after which the surface is either wiped off or rinsed with water. These short time scales of cleaning action are ineffective in providing the desired benefit since most known antimicrobials commonly used in such products take several hours to provide the desired kill of microbes.

#The invention will now be demonstrated with examples. The examples are for purpose of illustration only and do not limit the scope of claims in any manner.

#Compositions comprising each individual active and a combination were prepared with water as a carrier (details given in Table 1 below). Terpineol and thymol were obtained from Nishant aromas, India.

#About 107 bacterial cells (E. coli ATCC 10536) were taken in a test tube and contacted with various compositions for a period of 15 seconds. Bacteria were taken out after 15 seconds of contact and presence of viable cells was determined by serial dilution and plating on agar plates. The data is presented in log (Viable E. Coli) which is the log10 of the number of viable E. Coli remaining after 15 seconds of contact. Thus if 104 remained, log (Viable E. Coli) is 4.