Impact of sunlight on chloramphenicol mediated synthetic and herbal eye drops in terms of antimicrobial activity

Abstract

Ocular bacterial infections can cause several eye diseases that have potential impact on human health which is a growing concern worldwide. The use of chloramphenicol synthetic eye drops could provide immense coverage against bacterial infections. In addition, herbal eye drops have been emerged as a promising drug in the treatment of ocular diseases as chloramphenicol resistance occurs in many pathogenic species. However, the medicinal quality of drug product can be decreased with the influences of many environmental factors such as sunlight, UV radiation, heat and many other chemical reactions. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the antimicrobial activity of chloramphenicol synthetic and herbal eye drops in the presence of primary and secondary packaging after exposure to sunlight. Photochemical degradation was observed in chloramphenicol synthetic and herbal eye drops due to the sunlight exposure at different time interval. Antimicrobial susceptibility of Bacillus cereus, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Proteus vulgaris, Salmonella typhi was carried out using sunlight exposed chloramphenicol synthetic and herbal eye drops by using agar well diffusion method. Chloramphenicol and herbal eye drops effectively degraded by sunlight that also decreasing the antimicrobial activity. In some cases, chemical components degradation was observed in the primary packaging of the chloramphenicol eye drops. It was observed that chloramphenicol synthetic eye drops exhibited more antimicrobial activity than herbal eye drops. Thus, the findings of this study may provide the information of maintaining eye drops in a suitable manner for the molecular stability of the drug compounds. Improvising the knowledge of the photochemical behavior of drugs can provide a proper guidance for handling, packaging, and labeling of drug products in the manufactured company. Furthermore, it may assign the possibility of developing the public awareness to use the drugs by following the appropriate instructions for sustaining a healthy diseased free eye.