Microbial load enumeration of various form of herbal product for oral consumption
2010
Norulaiman Y. | Ong B.K. | Nor Azah M. A. | Mohd Irman Shah M.
Microbial contamination in herbal product is a major problem faced by our local herbal industry. Microbial load enumeration using total plate count (TPC) technique can be used to monitor and control microbial contamination. This study was carried out to determine the microorganism level in commercially available oral dosage herbal products. In this study, 50 commercial herbal products were randomly acquired from the market. These herbal products could be divided based on product type into majun (traditional preparation), herbal tea, capsule and tablet. Our results showed that 39 out of the 50 herbal products were contaminated with microorganisms. TPC of the contaminated herbal product were from 1x101 up to more than 250x105 CFU/g sample. Forty-four percent of the tablet and 18% of the capsule products showed TPC less than 10 CFU/g. Majun products had the highest number of TPC. The high level of microbial contamination could be due to the raw materials, fewer processing steps involved, low quality packaging material used in the majun production.
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