Recent Discoveries of Natural Products as Antimicrobial Alternatives for Bovine Mastitis Treatment

Abstract

Natural products with medicinal properties have been widely studied worldwide, especially those based on traditional folk medicine. Ethnoveterinary studies have indicated some plants and other natural products with traditional use for the treatment of various animal diseases, including mastitis. Mastitis is an inflammation of the mammary gland typically caused by an infection, and is the most important disease affecting dairy cattle health and production. This disease also affects human health, since zoonotic pathogens and/or toxins from mastitis can be transmitted to humans by consumption of dairy products. Such microorganisms involved in the etiology of mastitis include the bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus agalactiae in contagious mastitis, and Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa in environmental mastitis. The emergence of multi-drug resistant bacteria from this source has highlighted the importance of the search for alternative treatments to the use of conventional antibiotics for the treatment of cattle. This chapter will carry out a survey of original research on natural products used to combat mastitis pathogens in the last five years. Several papers have demonstrated antimicrobial activity of over 20 different natural products. Isolated substances, alone or in synergism with conventional antibiotics have been tested. The discovery of new natural alternatives for the treatment and prevention of mastitis has shown to be promising. The antimicrobial potential indicates the possibility of using some of these active compounds to control these pathogens in bovine milk, after conducting thorough studies on their safety to humans, and their effect in causing milk organoleptic changes.