Enumeration, Isolation and Identification of Pathogenic Microbes from Indian Paper Currency and its Antibiotic resistance susceptibility Pattern

Abstract

In the present study, total 77 Indian paper currency samples of different denominations (Rs 10, 20, 50 and 100) were randomly collected from fifteen different sources of Delhi in a sterile polybags. All the samples were analyzed by swab method for enumeration of total bacterial, total yeast and mould and coliform population as well as isolation and identification of relevant pathogenic bacteria. The result showed that total bacterial load in all 77 samples ranges from 52 to 3.8 x 106 cfu swab-1 whereas 22 samples were contaminated with total yeast and mould lie in the range from 24 to 1.3 x 106 cfu swab-1 and 22 samples were contaminated with coliform, ranges from 34 to 8.4 x 102 cfu swab-1. The most prevalent microorganisms found were Staphylococcus aureus (6.49 %), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (5.19 %), Salmonella sp. (7.79 %), Escherichia coli (9.09 %) and Shigella sp. (1.29 %). Antibiotic susceptibility and resistance pattern was also checked by Kirby Bauer well diffusion method. Various antibiotics were used against each isolated pathogens. These microbes could be one of the major sources of transmittance of diseases in Delhi.