Effects of surfactants on antibacterial drugs - A brief review

Abstract

More than half of the reported new discovered/invented drugs are ones with poor solubility, absorption or both. These are the crucial issues that can affect the bioavailability of the drugs. Therefore, improving solubility of poor-soluble drugs is absolutely important. One of the methods to solubilize them in biological fluids is using surfactants. Surfactants are an amphiphilic organic compound containing hydrophilic and lipophilic parts that allow it to reduce the surface tension between two opposite polar phases. Several popular methods used to determine critical micelle concentration which includes surface tension, conductivity and UV-vis spectroscopy. These surfactants plays number of roles in antibacterial compound synthesis include size reduction agent, stabilizer, solubilizer and drug-carrier. This review will also critically discuss on the roles of surfactants in antibacterial compound synthesis/production and its effect on the antibacterial activity of the drugs.