Examination of antibacterial and antifungal activity of selected non-antibiotic products.

A variety of compounds which are involved in the management of diseases of non-infectious aetiology have shown some antimicrobial activity in vitro, against bacteria and other microorganisms (13). Such compounds are called ìnon-antibioticsî. By the end of the nineteenth century the dyes were known to possess antimicrobial activity. Paul Ehrlich used methylene blue ñ one of phenothiazines compounds as an antimicrobial agent (4). So far, a lot of attention has been focused on phenothiazines, thioxanthenes and other agents with affinities to cellular transport systems or show other inhibition mechanism (5-6). The search of ìnon-antibioticsî among drugs distributed at Polish pharmaceutical market have been performed in Drug Institute in Warsaw for 7 years. So far, about 700 drugs which were randomly chosen from different groups of pharmaceutical products were examined. During this study (7-10), it was indicated that some of preparations inhibited growth at least one of the examined strains. The drugs with the following active substances showed significant antimicrobial activity: amlodipine, acepromazine, butorphanole, cisapride, cisplatine, clomipramine, diltiazem, emadastine, fluvastatine, ketamine, levocabastine, matipranalol, methotrexate, nicergoline, perazine, perphenazine, proxymetacaine, sertraline, tegaserole, tetrahydrozoline, ticlopidine and tropicamide. The surveillance study was performed on standard microbial strains. The aim of this study was the continuation of searching and characterizing the antimicrobial activity expressed by selected non-antibiotic drugs, analyzed during state control performed in National Medicines Institute in Warsaw. MATERIALS AND METHODS