TY - JOUR AU - Okunye, Olufemi L. AU - Olufunke, Babalola C. AU - Ezekiel, Adeleke O. AU - Titilayo, Durowaye M. AU - Joseph, Olawuyi O. AU - Seun, Ayedun J. AU - Asefisoye, Samuel L. PY - 2023/04/01 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Bacteriological Evaluation Of Nigerian Currency Notes From Selected Handlers In Ilesha Metropolis Of Osun State, Nigeria: https://doi.org/10.51412/psnnjp.2023.15 JF - The Nigerian Journal of Pharmacy JA - PSNNJP VL - 57 IS - 1 SE - Articles DO - UR - https://psnnjp.org/index.php/home/article/view/449 SP - 541-546 AB - <p><strong>Background: </strong>Peoples from various background and from difffferent works of life with difffferent&nbsp;hygienic status always engaged in&nbsp; physical transactions with a legal tender of varied denominations&nbsp;for exchange of goods and services, and one of the legal tender&nbsp; offiffifficially recognized in Nigeria is&nbsp;called naira. This study evaluated bacterial contaminants onnaira notes in circulations from&nbsp; selected&nbsp;handlers with specifific profession and determined the resistance of the isolates to conventional&nbsp;antibiotic in use.&nbsp;</p><p><strong>Methods</strong>: A&nbsp; total of 160 samples of currency notes 20 each of 8 existing denominations in Nigeria, collected from selected participants&nbsp; of various professions soaked in ringer's solution were serially&nbsp;diluted, subculture to various bacteriological media, Gram&nbsp; stained and biochemically characterized.&nbsp;Determination by antibiogram study was carried out,with a view to identifying resistance risk&nbsp; factors&nbsp;that could be associated with these contaminatedcurrency notes.&nbsp;</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The microbial load was found to be higher in lower denominations irrespective of their&nbsp;polymer status. The total bacterial&nbsp; count per milliliter varied between 2.28 ×104 and 4.20×107 CFU,&nbsp;while the percentage distributions of isolates; <em>Staphylococcus aureus&nbsp; </em>(36.8%), <em>Escherichia coli&nbsp;</em>(31.5%), <em>Bacillus spp </em>(3.7%) and <em>Pseudomonas aeruginosa </em>(27.5%) and varied resistance to&nbsp;antibiotics used were&nbsp; recorded.&nbsp;</p><p><strong>Conclusion</strong>: Bacterial antibiotic resistance has been associated with treatment failure, high health cost&nbsp;&nbsp;burden and loss of manpower&nbsp; hours due to over hospitalization. The microbial contaminant loads&nbsp;capable of causing opportunistic infection were found to be&nbsp; present in currency notes examined. The&nbsp;alarming resistance of bacteria to selected conventional antibiotics used in this study, serves&nbsp; an&nbsp;indication of potential threat of contaminated currency notes to public health.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p> ER -