Author(s):

Md. Asif Hossain, Kohinoor Akter Raton, Rashed Noor

Abstract: With a previous observation of the microbial load in the ear and eye medicaments in sterile dosage forms, present investigation further incremented the microbiological condition along with anti-bacterial traits of ointment products used for the treatment of eye and ear infections. Fifteen (15) different types of eye and ear ointments manufactured in different pharmaceutical industries were assessed to demonstrate and quantify the microbiological propagation using cultural and biochemical methods. The in vitro anti-bacterial activity was also examined employing the agar well diffusion method. Almost all the samples were found to harbor bacteria while in 3 samples the bacterial bio-burden exceeded the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) or British Pharmacopeia (BP) limit (<102 cfu/g). Fungal proliferation was also observed in most of the samples. Among the specific bacterial pathogens, Staphylococcus spp. and Bacillus spp. were found to be dominant, Escherichia coli and Klebsiella spp. were detected in 6 samples; however, all of the samples were completely free from fecal coliforms. The study of antibiogram revealed that 13 samples possessed the anti-bacterial activity with variations while 2 were devoid of such attribute. As has been found earlier in the eye and ear drops, the ointment dosage forms in the current study also revealed a huge microbial contamination. Absence of anti-bacterial feature in 2 samples is also likely to lead to the product ineffectiveness against bacterial infections. Thus, routine microbiological validation of the finished products is of importance for the sake of public health management.

Pages: 34-38  |  3207 Views  816 Downloads

Download (600KB)