Cetavlon: an Antiseptic

The Blue Pill Cetavlon:
an Antiseptic Choking fish

structure of cetavlon BACKGROUND: In 1991, in the course of looking at the effects of detergents on bacterial outer layers, a young Mexican lad, Jesús Romerez, discovered that cetavlon* ("CET") is more bactericidal than is the classic antibiotic streptomycin. A dozen or so other students expanded on this and found that a solution that is less than 0.0003% (0.3 μg/ml) not only prevents the growth of all bacteria tested but also killed them.** Streptomycin only stops the growth and enforces domancy. Because cetavlon is allowed as an ingredient in about a third of all shampoo brands, it must be relatively non-toxic to humans. Soon Romerez's findings led to the use of cetavlon as an antiseptic rinse for organs that are being transplanted. Just before the organ is to go into the recipient, it is rinsed in dilute cetavlon, then with sterile saline, and finally sewn into the patient. So you see that a student's discovery can find its way quickly to widespread application.

These findings suggest a few further experiments. You should consider taking up only one of them and maybe talking a few friends into taking up others. Some of the potential projects group themselves around the question of what other life-forms besides bacteria are killed by cetavlon (fish, roses, ants, worms, mosses, or even chloroplasts!), and the others projects group with the question of the environmental implications of this antiseptic that is so widely used in the world - particularly in shampoos that flush down drains into rivers (if it is so toxic to bacteria, can anything degrade it in the environment, or will it merely continue to accumulate eventually to attain levels that will affect the microbial underpinnings of the pyramid of life?). As you see, for any one person to do all of these things would be the impossible. That is why you should focus on only one aspect and do a good job answering that part. So let's look at some of the possibilities in greater detail.

Projects as an ANTISEPTIC

Cidal spectrum: One of the first things that needs to be done is to investigate the range of organisms which are affected by CET. What would really be nice is for it to kill "bad" organisms like germs, but not have any effect on all the rest of the "good" organisms. We already know that CET is lethal to more than 100 different kinds of bacteria. But what about fungi, viruses, protozoans, lower plants, etc.? We have absolutely no idea.

How much per liter of water?: Of course, to do any of the CET experiments you will need to know what is an effective concentration. Better yet, you will want to use the minimum lethal concentration for your test organisms. We have found this to be on the order of 0.0003% for Gram-negative bacteria, and about a tenth of that for Gram-positive organisms. So if you are going to test amoeba, or some other organism, you will have to make a number of different concentrations. One way you might consider is by making a series of concentrations such that each one is one-half as concentrated as the previous one.

2-fold serial dilution series

Once you have made up that series, you put some of your test organism into each one of the tubes and see what concentrations are effective, and how long it took to show effectiveness.

Sterilization of surgical instruments and the patient's skin:

Boat with barrels Millions of people life in very remote areas, and some are so remote that it is impossible to transport people in need of surgery into cities with the proper medical facilities. Thus doctors often have to go into the hinterlands themselves to help these victims of disease or accident. Of course, to do surgery in some remote jungle village requires the movement of lots of equipment and antiseptics. A favorite antiseptic is ethanol. But, like the picture ot the left shows, barrels of ethanol are not easy to transport.

Remote area surgery As the figure to the right indicates, lots of the liquid ethanol is lost due to breakage and leakage of containers. And this is to say nothing of its dangerous flammability and it disappearance due to its being consumed as "fire water."

Only a small bag needed How nice it would be to have a non-flammable, solid antiseptic which requires only small amounts! Maybe something in a bright blue capsule ^™ called CetriPure^™ would do the trick - depending, of course, on whether enough CET can fit into a capsule. If this is possible, only a few dozen pills would be needed for a whole town full of surgeries, and could easily be transported to remote destinations.

Washing with CET Another important need that a good antiseptic can fulfill is that of decontaminating a sick person's bedding and clothes.

Decontamination of water for drinking: An extremely important problem in most of the world is obtaining water that is safe to drink. Water-borne diseases are among the most prevalent in the world - typhoid, dysentery, cholera - just to name a few. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the little blue pill ^™ of CetriSafe^™ could be emptied into a bucket of river water, stirred to dissolve, and after sitting for a few minutes, the water would be safe to drink as all the harmful organisms would be killed? And we are not only concerned about water for human consumpter; we are also concerned about water for our animals. A great deal of livestock die of waterborne diseases also. So it might be well for you to determine how much CET must be added to water of differing siltiness to kill off the microbes.

Because of the novelty of any results in this effort, please TELL THIS WEBSITE what your results were.

Project on CET's ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS

Effects on photosynthesis, plant growth, germination, frog development: All of the above pertained to CET's being at lethal concentrations. What about if it is in sublethal amounts? Does it have an effect on various biological activities? There are literally thousands of different activities that could be tested.

Bioremediation of cetavlon contamination: The flip side to CET's ability to kill microbes is that dead microbes cannot digest CET, which would thus continue to build up in the environment as people continue to shampoo their heads and allow the runoff to go into our streams, rivers and oceans. But we do not know if CET can be degraded by microbes when the CET is in sub-lethal concentrations. It would be happy news if we knew that CET was biodegradable.

* Source: Sigma Chem Co., cat. no. H-5882, 100 gm = $26.
** Consider bacteria as something like plants - plants have three states of being: in the green, growing form, in seed form, and dead. Bacteria can also be growing, dormant or dead.