Microbial Quality of Some Herbal Formulations Used in Liver Disease

Herbal remedies are widely used for the treatment and prevention of various diseases and often contain highly active pharmacological compounds. These products have the potential of contamination with different microorganisms. This is due to raw materials contamination and unhygienic production conditions. In this study, microbiological qualities of some herbal formulations were examined. Ten herbal products as tablet, powder and capsule were procured from local market Ghaziabad, U.P., India. The products were evaluated for microbial contamination as per method given in Indian Pharmacopoeia (2010) microbial limit test for enumeration and identification. Total aerobic count showed that all products had more than 1.5×10³cfu/g and total fungal count 2 ×10² cfu/g. Isolation and identification of microbial contamination showed that some of the samples were contaminated with Salmonella sp. There was no evidence for contamination of the samples by Staphylococcus aurous, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli and Candida albicans. In conclusion, all the samples of herbal drugs evaluated did not generally meet the standards for microbial limits as specified in official monographs. Such products can adversely affect health status of consumers as well as the stability of the products.