Abstract

  Potassium aluminium sulphate (PAS) commonly referred to as ‘potash alum (PA)’, ‘alum’ or ‘tawas’ has recently drawn the attention of the scientific community as an efficient, safe and eco-friendly inorganic compound, commercially available and cost effective. It demonstrated a high propensity of antimicrobial activity in a variety of systems traditionally and scientifically. Several In vitro and In vivo studies report that alum individually or in synergism have antimicrobial properties against a broad spectrum of bacterial and fungal species and harnesses other activities beneficial to humans. This article has become crucial especially at a time when the world is bedevilled with antibiotic drug abuse resulting in antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Alum, however, has found applications in a wide spectrum of human activities such as pharmaceutical, cosmetic, food, textile and synthetic industries. This review presents an update of findings of this inorganic sulphate salt as an antimicrobial agent and miscellaneous applications.

Keywords: Alum; Antimicrobial Agent; Synergism; Antibiotic; Bacteria; Fungi

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Citation

Citation: Lawrence O Amadi. “A Review of Antimicrobial Properties of Alum and Sundry Applications". Acta Scientific Microbiology 3.4 (2020): 109-117.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Lawrence O Amadi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.