[Daily bath and its effect on the normal human skin flora quantitative and qualitative investigations of the aerobic skin flora (author's transl)].

Abstract

The behaviour of the aerobic skin flora of the flexor sides of the forearm, under a daily repeated bath during 21 days, using two marketable bath-supplements, was investigated in 24 volunteers for its quantitative and qualitative aspects. The combined scrubbing-washing-method was used as described by Burtenshaw with Ringer's solution. After the daily baths, using Wilcoxon-test, statistically no significant changes in the total number of microorganizations and in the number of the single groups of bacteria were found in the areas investigated by intermittent samplings of the skin flora. In the analysis of the composition of the normal aerobic skin flora, however, changes were obvious in 4 volunteers. There were no clinical changes of the skin surface in any of the volunteers.