Abstract
The increasing incidence of drug- resistant pathogens raises an urgent need to identify and isolate new bioactive compounds from medicinal plants using standardized modern analytical procedures. Medicinal plant-derived compounds could provide novel straightforward approaches against pathogenic bacteria. This review explores the antimicrobial activity of plant-derived components, their possible mechanisms of action, as well as their chemical potential. The focus is put on the current challenges and future perspectives surrounding medicinal plants antimicrobial activity. There are some inherent challenges regarding medicinal plant extracts and their antimicrobial efficacy. Appropriate and optimized extraction methodology plant species dependent leads to upgraded and selective extracted compounds. Antimicrobial susceptibility tests for the determination of the antimicrobial activity of plant extracts may show variations in obtained results. Moreover, there are several difficulties and problems that need to be overcome for the development of new antimicrobials from plant extracts, while efforts have been made to enhance the antimicrobial activity of chemical compounds. Research on the mechanisms of action, interplay with other substances, and the pharmacokinetic and/or pharmacodynamic profile of the medicinal plant extracts should be given high priority to characterize them as potential antimicrobial agents.
Highlights
The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that 80% of the developing world still benefits from the use of traditional medicines derived from medicinal plants [1,2,3]
To obtain a more comprehensive perspective of the potential use of medicinal plant extracts as alternative solutions to combat drug resistance, the most relevant studies regarding the validation of the antimicrobial activity of medicinal plants, the underlying mechanisms of action, the mechanisms of bacterial resistance, the plant-derived chemical compounds that may be responsible for such activity, the challenges and future perspectives of medicinal plant antimicrobial activity were critically analyzed in this review
An endophytic fungus isolated from the medicinal plant Hypericum acmosepalum contained some compounds including hyperenone A, hypercalin B, and hyperphorin and emodin, responsible for antibacterial activity on resistant Staphylococcus aureus, on Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Salmonella enterica, Escherichia coli, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, upon the fungal strains Aspergillus niger and Candida albicans [43]
Summary
Natalia Vaou 1, *, Elisavet Stavropoulou 2, *, Chrysa Voidarou 3 , Christina Tsigalou 4.
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