An in vitro investigation of the antimicrobial activity of oxifulvic acid

Extract

Sir

Humic substances, of which 90–95% are fulvic acids, commonly account for 50% of the dissolved organic carbon in stream water. Humic acids are three to five times more abundant in soils than fulvic acids,¹ whereas fulvic acids are nine to 10 times more abundant in water than humic acids.² The application potential of fulvic acids in the treatment of human and animal diseases has not been investigated properly, possibly due to the difficulty of isolating fulvic acids from waters and soils in nature.

A South African company [Enerkom (Pty) Ltd] has developed a unique process to convert bituminous coal by controlled wet oxidation with oxygen in high yield to high quality humic and fulvic acids. To distinguish these coal-derived products from naturally occurring humic and fulvic acids, the former are called oxihumic and oxifulvic acid respectively. From a thorough analysis of oxifulvic acid by means of mass spectrometry (MS) and gas chromatography– MS (GC-MS) techniques, Bergh et al.³ identified some 50 different compounds. Most of these were carboxylic acids and ordinary physiological metabolites with no evidence of any toxic compound in the product mixture.