Antibacterial Activity of Soaps Indigenously Made in Gombe Metropolis, Nigeria

As part of Federal Government policy on Small Medium Enterprises in Nigeria, a lot of small scale businesses have sprung up including soap making industries using indigenous contents. The ability of indigenously manufactured soaps to remove germs and dirt is paramount. An in vitro evaluation of antibacterial activity of twelve randomly collected indigenously made soaps in Gombe metropolis, Nigeria was conducted using agar well diffusion method against strains of reference microbes viz; Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Bacillus subtilis and Klebsiella pneumonia being human skin bacteria, followed by time kill kinetic assay to determine the pharmaco-dynamics of active soaps against susceptible test organisms. The results obtained show that six of the soaps exhibited antibacterial activity with varying degree of zones of inhibition. S. aureus was the most susceptible amongst the organisms while E. coli and P. aeruginosa were the least susceptible microbes. The time kill kinetic assay shows that the bactericidal effect of the soaps is dose and contact time dependent as the susceptible organisms were eliminated after 8 h exposure. The antibacterial activities exhibited by these soaps suggest them as potential candidate in bio-prospecting for antibacterial.