Abstract

Chitosan is a biopolymer that has been used in the production of biomaterials and is the focus of numerous studies due to its antimicrobial activity. Chitosan has high value-added applications in medicine, agricultural and cosmetics. Its broad spectrum of action, strong bactericidal/bacteriostatic activity and low cytotoxicity are some of the many advantages of chitosan as an antimicrobial agent. This paper consists of a review of the previous studies of the antimicrobial properties of chitosan and its derivatives. Articles were searched in the databases "Pubmed", "Scopus" and "Web of Knowledge", and excluded those which used the combination of chitosan with some drug or active herbal principle, without restriction of year of publication. This research was carried out to investigate the impact factor of each journal and to develop a timeline to demonstrate the expansion of research in the area. Of the total of 52 articles found, 78.85% (41) dealt with the antibacterial activity of chitosan and 30.77% (16) with antifungal activity. Of the 41 articles that dealt with bacteria, 39.02% (16) evaluated the activity of chitosan against Staphylococcus aureus and 43.89% (18) against Escherichia coli. The antifungal activity was assessed in 37.5% (6) of strains of Candida albicans. It was observed that there has been an increasing use of chitosan as an antimicrobial agent in recent years, possibly related to its greater use in the production of polymer microparticles and microspheres in various areas. The average impact factor was 2.62 (± 1.10), by JCR, which indicates the rigorous selection of the articles used in this review and the greater credibility of this study. Although there are a growing number of studies on the antimicrobial properties of chitosan, further studies are needed to maximize its use. It is important to encourage research to evaluate the antimicrobial effect of chitosan on other clinical pathogens resistant to antimicrobial activity.

Key words: Chitosan, anti-bacterial agents, antifungal agents.