Greenbridge Environmental Control Limited has announced what it calls a major world breakthrough in the fight against the superbug Clostridium difficile. Greenbridge says its
non-toxic green cleaning product range called Activ8 has finally been proved a world beater following months of tests by leading scientists at Glasgow's Caledonian University.

Greenbridge Managing Director Brian Baker said: We have spent more than a million pounds getting to the stage where today we can say with full confidence that Activ8 kills C. difficilestone dead.

Because we couldn't acquire a pure sample of C. difficile, we had been relying on laboratory tests done on a virulent surrogate. We waited more than a year to get the real thing. But finally the tests were done by Dr Chris Woodall at the School of Life Sciences in Glasgow. We could not have asked for better results and I believe this marks a real turning point in the fight against C. difficileworldwide because this product, used regularly in a hospital setting, will wipe out the bug.

Greenbridge, which is based in Bristol, has been steadily winning orders worldwide on the back of what is already known about Activ8 and its performance against superbugs. But this latest news is expected to boost the company into another sphere.

Dr Chris Woodall, the independent microbiologist who with his team carried out the latest tests, said: We are one of the few laboratories in the world that can actually do this test. We tested Activ8 against a purified spore preparation from C. difficile. The test is a modification of the EN standard test EN 13704 that is designed to show sporicidal activity of a disinfectant in a laboratory. This is a very difficult test to pass. The pass was a 1,000- fold reduction in spore activity in one hour.

This is a very good indicator that Activ8 would be effective against C. difficilespores on environmental inanimate surfaces in a hospital contaminated with C. difficile. It is likely that environmental C. difficile spores are responsible for the transmission of C. difficileand subsequent hospital acquired infection. This puts Activ8 in an elite group of disinfectant agents and it could place the formula among the leading tools in fighting hospital acquired C. difficile.

This agent combines a low toxicity to humans with the capability of breaking open the highly resistant disease-carrying spores and killing them. This then may prevent spores establishing infection in vulnerable hospital patients.

Activ8 can be fogged onto wards with patients brought back in after only one hour. It can be used in soaps, hand wipes, creams and sponges and it is also available as a floor cleaner and spray.

In May 2007, Dr Peder Bo Nielsen of Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow, published a two month report using Activ8 as the everyday cleaning product across a ward that included private rooms, office, exam rooms and day areas. The report shows that Activ8 controlled and ultimately reduced the level of infection within the ward environment despite the constant human traffic of patients, visitors and medical staff.

The trial is scheduled to be extended to include the use of Activ8 Plus Vaporization Fluid, which allows users to completely decontaminate an area in a short space of time, with a minimum of disruption to patients and staff.