Bacterial contamination of amniotic membrane in a tissue bank from Iran

Hamid Reza Aghayan, Parisa Goodarzi, Alireza Baradaran-Rafii, Bagher Larijani, Leila Moradabadi, Fakher Rahim, Babak Arjmand

Human Amniotic Membrane (AM) transplantation can promote tissue healing and reduce inflammation, tissue scarring and neovascularization. Homa Peyvand Tamin (HPT) tissue bank has focused on manufacturing human cell and tissue based products including AM. The purpose of this study is to evaluate and identify bacterial contamination of AMs that is produced by HPT for several ophthalmic applications. From July 2006 to April 2011, 122 placentas from cesarean sections were retrieved by HPT after obtaining informed consent from the donors. Besides testing donor's blood sample for viral markers, microbiological evaluation was performed pre and post processing. During tissue processing, decontamination was performed by an antibiotic cocktail including; Gentamicin, Ceftriaxone and Cloxacillin. Of 271 cesarean section AM donors who were screened as potential donors, 122 were accepted for processing and assessed for microbiological contamination. Donors' age were between 21 and 41 years (Mean = 27.61 ± 0.24). More than 92% of mothers were in their first or second gravidity with full term pregnancies. The most prevalent organisms were Staphylococci species (72.53%). After processing, contamination rates markedly decreased by 84.62% (p value = 0.013). According to our results, most of bacterial contaminations were related to donation process and the contamination pattern suggests procurement team as a source. Therefore we recommend that regular training programs should be implemented by tissue banks for procurement staff. These programs should focus on improved donor screening and proper aseptic technique for tissue retrieval. We also suggest that tissue banks should periodically check the rate and types of tissue contaminations. These data help them to find system faults and to update processing methods.