Decontamination of tomato, red cabbage, carrot, fresh parsley and fresh green onion inoculated with Shigella sonnet and Shigella flexneri by some essential oils [in vitro conditions]

Essential oils and their major constituents are useful sources of antimicrobial compounds. There are a few reports on the decontamination and antimicrobial activity of essential oils towards Shigella spp. In this study, the antimicrobial and decontamination potentials of essential oils at different concentrations, belonging to plants such as Thymus vulgaris, Saturiea hortensis, Mentha polegium, Cuminum cyminum, Lavandula officinalis and Mentha viridis L. [spearmint], towards Shigella sonnei and Shigella flexneri were investigated. The disk diffusion method demonstrated the antimicrobial potential of the essential oils. The ability of essential oils to decontaminate vegetables such as, tomato, red cabbage, carrot, fresh parsley and fresh green onion that were previously inoculated with Shigella spp. was determined. Inhibitory effects of essential oils towards Shigella spp. were noted in the disk diffusion method. There was a reduction in Shigella population following inoculation of cultures with 0.5% and 0.1% [v/v] essential oils. This study confirmed that essential oils have the potential to be used for decontamination of vegetables

Extraction and determination of cyproheptadine in human urine by DLLME-HPLC method

Novel dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction [DLLME], coupled with high performance liquid chromatography with photodiode array detection [HPLC-DAD] has been applied for the extraction and determination of cyproheptadine [CPH], an antihistamine, in human urine samples. In this method, 0.6 mL of acetonitrile [disperser solvent] containing 30 micro L of carbon tetrachloride [extraction solvent] was rapidly injected by a syringe into 5 mL urine sample. After centrifugation, the sedimented phase containing enriched analyte was dissolved in acetonitrile and an aliquot of this solution injected into the HPLC system for analysis. Development of DLLME procedure includes optimization of some important parameters such as kind and volume of extraction and disperser solvent, pH and salt addition. The proposed method has good linearity in the range of 0.02-4.5 micro g mL[-1] and low detection limit [13.1 ng mL[-1]]. The repeatability of the method, expressed as relative standard deviation was 4.9% [n = 3]. This method has also been applied to the analysis of real urine samples with satisfactory relative recoveries in the range of 91.6-101.0%