Quantitative Degradation Analysis of Amoxicillin Pharmaceutical Products by Selected Bacterial Isolates

The current study uses enrichment culture techniques to isolate, screen, and quantitatively evaluate bacterial isolates that can break down the antibiotic amoxicillin. After 13 bacterial strains were isolated from soil samples via selective enrichment, 11 of them showed amoxicillin tolerance up to 500 ppm and were chosen for additional study. Isolates AMX-1b, AMX-2b, AMX-5a, AMX-7a, and AMX-9a showed robust growth at all concentrations, according to Maximum Tolerance Level (MTL) screening, suggesting high resistance and possible antibiotic degradation ability. These results were corroborated by growth pattern analysis, which revealed strong growth patterns for a few isolates even at higher antibiotic doses. A varied collection of rod-shaped bacteria, both Gram-positive and Gram-negative, with differing capacities for motility, endospore and capsule production, enzyme activity, and sugar fermentation were identified through morphological and biochemical characterisation. A bacterial consortium (HI: AMX-5a + AMX-7a) and three isolates (AMX-2b, AMX-5a, and AMX-7a) were chosen for quantitative degradation study. The isolates showed notable amoxicillin degradation under ideal conditions; after 72 hours of incubation, AMX-2b had the best efficiency (77.54%), followed by the HI consortium (73.31%), AMX-5a (59.93%), and AMX-7a (37.80%). These results point to the possible use of particular bacterial isolates and consortia for the bioremediation of settings contaminated with amoxicillin.