Sadaf Riaz (2007-va-277)

Microbiological Quality Assessment Of Human And Veterinary Drugs - 2015. - 93p.;

The continued increase in population results in increasing demand for pharmaceutical products. According to Pakistan pharmaceutical manufacturers association, Pakistan has approx. 400 pharmaceutical industries including 25 multinational industries. The Pakistan pharmaceutical industry meets 70% of country’s demand of pharmaceutical drugs.
Medicines are chemical compound that are administrated to human or animal as an aid to diagnosis, treatment or prevention of disease (Lecca, 1978).
Microbiological quality assessment is very important point of pharmaceutical manufacturing. The term quality in its wide sense means “Safety “. Microbial contamination means, presence of undesired micro-organisms or their metabolic products (Uba, 1990).
Pharmaceutical drugs are used in many ways in treatment of diseases (Mugoyela et al. 2010). Pharmaceuticals of different forms are susceptible to contamination by different microbes (Aulton, 2002). Contamination of medicines with micro-organisms can bring about changes in their physiochemical properties, results in product degradation before their expiry date (Shaikh et al. 2000). Microbial contamination rang from true pathogen like Clostridium tetani, to opportunistic pathogens, such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Mwambete, 2009). Microbial infections not only due to physical presence of micro-organisms, but also their metabolites/toxins can be very harmful even in low quantities (Shukla et al. 2004). Medicines used in treatments cannot afford to have microbial contamination. Patients who take medicines have very weak immune system which makes them vulnerable to wide range of infections. Microbial contamination of drugs may contribute to secondary microbial infections in immunologically weak patients (Adeshina et al. 2009). Contaminated pharmaceuticals may lead to medication complicacy in patients.
Drugs can be divided into two types on the basis of microbiology; sterile pharmaceutical products and non-sterile pharmaceutical products (Clement et al. 2013). Sterile pharmaceutical products should not contain any viable micro-organisms and non-sterile pharmaceutical products may contain viable micro-organisms but it should be within official limit and all drugs should not have any pathogenic bacteria. Most of drugs can be contaminated during storage and handling (Takon and Antai, 2006). Antimicrobial agents are added to medicines to minimize microbial growth but should not be added to mask poor manufacturing process (Gad et al. 2011).
The level of microbial contamination in medicines depends on availability of nutrients, water, presence of other micro-organisms, osmotic pressure and oxygen etc. The factors determining the results of drug-borne infections may include the type and amount of microbes, patient’s immune system and route of administration (Baird, 2004).
In recent years manufacturing of drugs have improved. The occurrence of microbes in drugs has been well documented. There have been many reports of infections caused by contaminated drugs (Ibezim, 2002; Coker, 2005). But majority of cases of infections caused by medicines are not recognized and reported as such (Denyer and Baird, 2006). Previous studies have showed microbiological quality concern related to commercially available drugs (Denyer and Baird, 2006).
Contamination of drugs results in loss of faith of a consumer in pharmaceutical industry and sales would go down (Mugoyela and Mwambete, 2010).
Although pharmaceutical industries are one of the growing and expanding sector in Pakistan, but the quality of medicines varies as they are retail oriented. Unfortunate situation is present in sales of drugs. A number of unlicensed drugs stores selling poorly manufactured drugs

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Hence the microbiological quality of pharmaceuticals, assessment of number and type of bacteria and fungi within drugs, is essential to ensure consumer safety (Urmi et al. 2014; Tamalli et al. 2013)
This study to relate to national need and reflects its importance. New international trend focus on the quality of pharmaceutical products, unfortunately few studies has been carried out in this prospective which is not proven to be sufficient in predicting the quality of drugs. This has compelled me to do research on this topic in order to assess the level of such microbial contaminants in pharmaceuticals given to patients in Pakistan.


Department of Microbiology

2275-T


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