V.S. Sibirtsev¹, U.Yu. Nechiporenko²  

1 Saint Petersburg State Chemical and Pharmaceutical University (St.-Petersburg, Russia)

2 All-Russia Research Institute for Food Additives (St.-Petersburg, Russia)

Recently, in pharmaceutical, cosmetic, food, feed and other products produced and consumed by the human society, there is an increasing lack of biologically active substances (BAS) of natural origin, one of the most acceptable and widespread sources of which are various plant extracts. In addition, the problem of developing sufficiently objective and at the same time rapid and widely applicable methods for quantitative assessment of pro- and antibiotic properties, as well as microbiological contamination of a large number of samples, both new and already approved for use, is becoming increasingly urgent. In this regard, in this work, a new instrumental method was developed for assessing pro- and antibiotic properties, as well as microbiological contamination of samples of various pharmaceutical, cosmetic, food, feed and other products, as well as individual ingredients and additives to them. This technique provides for periodic (every 2 h) recording of changes in pH, redox potential, and electrical conductivity of a liquid nutrient test medium (TM) incubated in the presence and absence of viable test microorganisms (TM) and test samples (TS). Then, using this method, a comparative analysis of pro- and antibiotic activity against Lactobacillus acidophilus (typical representatives of useful microflora, widespread both outside and inside the human body and other warm-blooded animals, in addition, widely used by humans in many biotechnological processes) different concentrations of "essential oils" (EO) obtained from 10 different types of plant materials (such as leaves, stems, flowers, etc. Méntha piperíta, Mentha arvensis, Oríganum vulgares, Thymus serpyllum, Melissa officinalis, Rosmarinus officinalis, Jasminum grandiflorum, Tagetes patula, Valeriana officinalis and Allium sativum). Studies have shown that among TS, the most active prolonged antibiotic properties against TM were exhibited by EO obtained from Allium sativum bulbs, Jasminum grandiflorum flowers, Oríganum vulgares herb and Tagetes patula flowers. The initial biological activity of TS in most cases was greater than their prolonged activity. At the same time, the medium-term (in terms of the time of interaction between TO and TM) antibiotic activity of TS was, as a rule, intermediate in magnitude between their initial and prolonged activity. Thus, it is obvious that the biological activity of products, including plant extracts, is largely determined by the choice of not only the raw material and the method of extracting BAS from it, but also the concentration of the extract in the product. Moreover, the exact nature of these dependencies in most cases can be established only empirically, with the help of a significant number of tests. And the latter can be conveniently carried out using the methodology presented in this work, which makes it possible to assess microbiological contamination, as well as the effect on the dynamics of the vital activity of microorganisms as various samples of pharmaceutical, cosmetic, food, feed and other products, as well as individual ingredients and additives to it, much more quickly, objectively and informatively, as well as significantly less laborious and material-intensive than using standard visual microbiological methods.

Sibirtsev V.S., Nechiporenko U.Yu. Method of electrochemical biotesting applied to comparative analysis of antimicrobial properties of various essential oils. Technologies of living systems. 2021. V. 18. № 1. P. 58–66. DOI: 10.18127/j20700997202101-06 (In Russian).

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