M.M. SHAWKI*^#, A. GABALLAH**

*Medical Biophysics Department, Medical Research Institute, Alexandria University, Egypt
**Microbiology Department, Medical Research Institute, Alexandria University, Egypt

Many bacterial species developed numerous mechanisms that render bacteria resistant to, some and in certain few cases to nearly all antibiotics. Thus replacing or combining antibiotics with physical method becomes urgently needed. Effect of DC electric field on bacteria was studied decades before but DC usage has many drawbacks. Therefore some researches started to utilize very high AC electric field instead of DC but it is not very suitable for in vivo applications. In this paper we exposed E. coli to low electric AC fields with low voltage and high exposure time to make electric energy equivalent to those used in high AC field conditions. We tried frequencies ranging from 10 Hz to 1 MHz. We found significant reduction in the viable bacterial counts at 10 and 100 Hz while no significant changes were found at higher frequencies. We concluded that to replace high AC electric field with low one, equivalent electric energy should be maintained as well as low frequencies should be used.

Corresponding author’s e-mail: mamdouh971@hotmail.com

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