Monitoring and controlling of bacteria in pharmaceutical industries water system

Abstract

Water is a key portion of the pharmaceutical industry. Water is used for cleaning‎ of machine parts and equipments in production area, as main raw material in semisolid (creams and ointments) and aqueous sterile and non sterile products, and also as a steam supply to autoclaves which support the laboratories‎. Production, storage and distribution of pharmaceutical water should be regularly monitored for microbiological contaminants which affect quality of drugs. In this study water samples were collected and examined from pharmaceutical water system in a pharmaceutical factory during twelve months, once per month, from fifteen points covering all stages of the treatment process starting from wells, pretreatment points; treatment points ending with purified points which are the main source of water used in all pharmaceutical process. Two hundred and sixteen water samples were collected and examined, 156 isolates were selected according to morphological characteristics. VITEK system 2 (BioMérieux) ‎was used for identification of all isolates resulting to 24 different identified bacteria.