Figure 3.

Efficiency of antibiotic incubation and drying steps in reducing artificially loaded S. epidermidis bacterial counts. (A) Loading of 100 μL of 10⁶ S. epidermidis was performed before raffinose incubation with/without antibiotic. AM samples were taken after loading and after incubation and assessed for CFU/mL. (B) Loading of 100 μL of 10⁶ CFU/mL S. epidermidis was performed after raffinose incubation with/without antibiotic and before drying. AM samples were taken after loading and after drying and assessed for CFU/mL. Only samples processed without antibiotic are shown, as no colonies were seen either in the loaded baseline or after drying. Data represents experiments performed on 5 different donors and is represented as mean ± SEM. Data compared by one-way ANOVA, Kruskal-Wallis test followed by multiple comparison uncorrected Dunn’s test. Statistical significance vs. baseline represented by ***p ≤ 0.001, ****p ≤ 0.0001.