Detection of Inhibitory Effect of Aluminium Potassium Sulfate Against Some Bacterial and Fungal Strains

The percentage of microbial resistance to antibiotics has been remarkably increasing in the last decades. For this reason, there has been an increasing demand for using natural products molecules for medicinal purposes. The current study revealed the antimicrobial activity of aluminium potassium sulfate (alum) against the selected pathogens which includes gram positive and negative bacteria and fungus.Alum inhibits the growth of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus at all concentrations (50,40,30,20, 10 and 5 %). The percentage of microbial resistance to antibiotics has been remarkably increasing in the last decades. For this reason, there has been an increasing demand for using natural products molecules for medicinal purposes. The current study revealed the antimicrobial activity of aluminium potassium sulfate (alum) against the selected pathogens which includes gram positive and negative bacteria and fungus.Alum inhibits the growth of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus at all concentrations (50,40,30,20, 10 and 5 %). However, Vibrio cholera growth was inhibited at the concentrations of (50, 40, 30, 20 and 10 %). The antimicrobial activity of alum against the selected pathogenic fungi (Cryptococcus neoformance , Cryptococcus gattii, Rhizopus micrococcus and Mucor circinelloiles) was measured. The results showed that alum has excellent antimicrobial activity against all the selected pathogenic fungi in all concentrations. With no inhibitory effect against both Rhizopus micrococcus and Mucor circinelloides at the lowest concentration of alum (5%). The growth of fungi is significantly reduced by 4-fold in the presence of alum in comparison with those grown in YPD media alone. Which means that half of antimicrobial activity of alum is due to inhibitory mechanism differ from the acidification. The above results confirmed the antimicrobial activity of alum against the selected pathogens, and proved that the inhibitory activity of alum is not only due to the low pH produced by alum but also to the presence of other inhibitory mechanism of alum. Regarding these results further study is needed to understand the inhibitory mechanisms of alum with neglecting the acidity effect of alum.