Projects

Studies on Enhancement of Microbicidal Activity of Phenolic Compounds by Addition of Inorganic Salts

Microbial infections are one of the major causes of death and disease in today’s world. This has led to the use of a variety of antiseptics, disinfectants and toiletries that are antimicrobial. Yet, at times they prove either not to be 100% effective or to be toxic to humans. It is seen that most of synthetic and natural products, used as antimicrobial contain phenolic compounds as their active ingredient. Hence we thought of methods to increase the anti-microbial activity of phenolic compounds.In this project, we found out the effect of inorganic salts on the anti-microbial activity of samples that have phenolic compounds as their active ingredient. We took three synthetic (dettol, lifebuoy and domex) and three natural products (tomato, turmeric, grapes). The inorganic salts used were ferrous sulphate, ferric chloride and sodium chloride. The assay used was well diffusion assay. Firstly the minimum inhibitory concentration of the salts was identified. This was followed by the minimum inhibitory concentration of the synthetic and natural compounds. Lastly whether addition of salts at their MIC to the samples would increase their zone of inhibition. The MIC of ferrous sulphate and ferric chloride for Staphylococcus aureus was 8.9mM and 0.17M.The MIC of synthetic samples were As crude extract was taken the zone of inhibition of natural products were Addition of salts increased the zone of inhibition for lifebuoy.Other compounds did not show specific enhancement effects