Professional lab testing helps medical companies assure that their products meet safety regulations and are are sterile, safe, legal, and ready for consumption before production. Here are a few facts you need to know before hiring antimicrobial testing labs for your production business.
An antimicrobial is an agent that kills microorganisms or inhibits their growth. Antimicrobial medicines can be grouped according to the microorganisms they act primarily against. For example, antibacterials (commonly known as antibiotics) are used against bacteria and antifungals are used against fungi. They can also be classed according to their function. Antimicrobials that kill microbes are called microbicidal; those that merely inhibit their growth are called microbiostatic. Disinfectants such as bleach are non-selective antimicrobials.
Use of substances with antimicrobial properties is known to have been common practice for at least 2000 years. Ancient Egyptians and ancient Greeks used specific molds and plant extracts to treat infection. More recently, microbiologists such as Louis Pasteur and Jules Francois Joubert observed antagonism between some bacteria and discussed the merits of controlling these interactions in medicine. In 1928, Alexander Fleming became the first to discover a natural antimicrobial fungus known as penicillium rubens. He named the substance extracted from the fungus penicillin and in 1942 it was successfully used to treat a streptococcus infection. Penicillin also proved successful in the treatment of many other infectious diseases such as gonorrhea, strep throat and pneumonia, which were potentially fatal to patients up until then. Microbiological testing labs seek out dangerous microbials in products meant for consumption.
Today, numerous antimicrobial agents exist to treat a wide range of infectious diseases and prevent them from being foreign contaminants in food. For instance, analytical antimicrobial testing is necessary for many medical products in order to assure they meet all government regulations.
Antibiotics are among the most commonly used drugs. For example 30 percent or more patients admitted to hospital are treated with one or more courses of antibiotics. However antibiotics are also among the drugs commonly misused by physicians, e.g. usage of antibiotic agents in viral respiratory tract infections. The inevitable consequence of widespread and injudicious use of antibiotics has been the emergence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens, resulting in a serious threat to global public health. The resistance problem demands that a renewed effort be made to seek antibacterial agents effective against pathogenic bacteria resistant to current antibiotics. Possible strategies towards this objective include increased sampling from diverse environments and application of metagenomics to identify bioactive compounds produced by currently unknown and uncultured microorganisms as well as the development of small-molecule libraries customized for bacterial targets.
Controlled environment and utilities monitoring testing done by certified testing laboratories is typically used to determine sanitation levels of products. Since the antimicrobial testing varies depending on the product, you will want to contact a lab to find out if the specialize in the testing you need to have done.
Though you might not think that this kind of testing is all that common, even water needs to be tested. In may cases, water used for product development must be tested for heavy metal content, conductivity, and nitrates to make sure it is safe for consumption.