DETERMINATION OF MICROBIAL LOAD IN MULTIVITAMIN AND COUGH SYRUPS SOLD IN DHAKA CITY
Abstract
The production of substandard drugs and use of inappropriate methods in manufacturing medical products in pharmaceutical industries may cause non-therapeutic effect in patients particularly in children. Hence this study was conducted to determine the microbiological quality of multivitamin and cough syrups of different brands sold in local pharmacy in Dhaka city. Microbiological analysis was carried out using spread plate technique on different culture media including nutrient agar, mannitol salt agar, MacConkey agar, mFC agar, TCBS agar and SS agar for the determination of total viable bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, total coliforms, Vibrio cholerae, Salmonella spp. and Shigella spp. respectively from eleven multivitamin and twelve cough syrups. The results revealed that 50% of the cough syrup and 91% of the multivitamin syrup showed compliance with the official requirement of microbiological quality as they did not show any growth or their microbiological count is within the USP permissible limit (<102 cfu/ml). While the major contaminants in cough syrup were Staphylococcus aureus (75%), Escherichia coli (17%) and total coliforms (42%), multivitamin syrup (9%) contained only Staphylococcus aureus. Other pathogens like Vibrio cholerae, Salmonella spp. and Shigella spp. could not be detected in both cough and multivitamin syrups. Although most of the multivitamin syrup (91%) samples are free from potential microbial threat, some of the cough syrup (75%) samples are contaminated with pathogenic bacteria. Hence potential safety measurement should be taken during the production and use of cough syrups to maintain the microbiological quality.
Keywords:
Syrup, microbiological quality, contamination, pathogenic bacteria, pharmaceuticalsDOI
https://doi.org/10.25004/IJPSDR.2014.060313References
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