Antifungal Plants of Iran: An Insight into Ecology, Chemistry, and Molecular Biology

Abstract

Worldwide occurrence of fungal infections has been dramatically increased in recent years due to a continuous increase in immunosuppressive conditions like AIDS, organ transplantation and hematologic malignancies. Fungal infections are major concerns in Iran with an increasing numbers of new reports from superficial to deep hospital-acquired infections every year. Although there are no comprehensive data on the real incidence of fungal infections, especially systemic ones in Iran, about 50 % of suspected individuals referred to our laboratory (Mycology Department of the Pasteur Institute of Iran) were found to have dermatophytosis, candidiasis, and pityriasis versicolor (Sadeghi et al. 2011). Plants are rich sources of beneficial secondary metabolites which are attractive as flavors, fragrances, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and antimicrobials. Increasing trends of health organizations and pharmaceutical industries to use plants as safe and effective alternative sources of synthetic antifungals are due to major problems of slow growing and high costs of synthetic pharmaceutics, their life-threatening side effects, rapid increase in new fungal infections, and dramatic emergence of multidrug-resistant fungal pathogens. Interestingly, antifungal drug discovery from medicinal plants is a rapidly growing industry worldwide (WHO 2002). World trade of medicinal plants is now more than 43 billion dollars and has been predicted to reach to 5 trillion dollars in 2050. It has been estimated that around 7,500–8,000 plant species are growing in Iran of which only 130 species have been routinely used as anti-infective drugs in traditional medicine (Rechinger 1982). Iran’s contribution to this market is about 60 million dollars, which increases every year (Noorhosseini Niyaki et al. 2011). This chapter highlights the current status of antifungal plant flora of Iran regarding their ecology, biochemistry, and molecular biology. Special attention will be made to effective plant components responsible for antifungal properties.