Developing new antimicrobial therapies: Are synergistic combinations of plant extracts/compounds with conventional antibiotics the solution? (original) (raw)
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Nowadays, multiple antibiotic resistance by disease-causing microorganisms are a major public health problem. Antimicrobial compounds from plants have been found to be synergistic enhancers in that though they may not possess any antimicrobial properties alone, but when used concurrently with standard drugs they enhance the activity of the drug. The synergistic effect of the association of antibiotic and plant extracts against resistant pathogens leads to new choices for the treatment of infectious diseases. Also synergy between bioactive plant product and antibiotics will confront problems of toxicity and overdose since lesser concentrations of two agents in combination are required, due to these reasons, there is need therefore, for continuous exploration of multidrug resistance modulating principles from plants sources.
Perspectives on the enhancement of commercially available antibiotics by natural products
BackgroundOpportunistic resistant bacteria are health and economically relevant in the health care systems and in industries worldwide, especially in the so-called resistant bacteria era (RBE). Enhancing the activity of commercially available antibiotics (CAAs) with different types of natural products (NPs) is a successful antimicrobial strategy, for instance the amoxicillin and clavulanate mixture.ObjectiveTo find research trends in this field during 2015-2020 and to detect potential drug hits with potential to diversify formulations and materials design that can be useful to manage the RBE.Systematic review resultsIt yielded 190 reports of synergistic effects of CAAs and NPs. The analyzed variables were: a) natural products origin: plant family, genera, secondary metabolite type; b) strains: +/- Gram, genera, most frequent species, application field; and c) CAAs: family, most frequent CAAs. The families with potential to have more bioactive species were Apocynaceae, Rubiaceae, Eup...
Alternative to Antibiotics from Herbal Origin – Outline of a Comprehensive Research Project
Current Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Medicine (Formerly Current Pharmacogenomics) , 2018
Background: The presently practiced procedure of development of new antimicrobial substances to control infection of the pathogenic microbes is now at a point of challenge and threat for losing relevancy in near future. Objective: Exploration of Herbal source for searching alternative to the antibacterial substances. Method: Through thorough literature survey, a list of 1060 plants with reported use among various communities throughout the globe in the purposes related with combating and controlling different types of infection has been identified. An outline of research on the plants for validation of the traditional claims by conventional antimicrobial, antioxidant and immunostimulant activity study and identification of phytochemicals is added. Limitation of the contemporary systems are discussed with a proposal of addition of fresh extract of succulent plant parts of listed medicinal plants along with conventional solvent extracted portion of dry plant parts as another parameter of study. Result: A comprehensive research proposal for study on the medicinal plants which may act in some way as alternative to the present system of use of synthetic antimicrobial substances to control diseases of infective origin with a detail guideline for production, storage and global transport of succulent bio-medicines are discussed. Conclusion: Following the way of proposed thorough research, a new type of herbal medicine based treatment system may be started and an opportunity for establishment of export oriented agro-medicine industries may be created. DOI:10.2174/1875692116666180419154033. “The published manuscript is available at EurekaSelect viahttp://www.eurekaselect.com/openurl/content.php?genre=article&doi=\[10.2174/1875692116666180419154033\].”
Metabolites
The war on multidrug resistance (MDR) has resulted in the greatest loss to the world’s economy. Antibiotics, the bedrock, and wonder drug of the 20th century have played a central role in treating infectious diseases. However, the inappropriate, irregular, and irrational uses of antibiotics have resulted in the emergence of antimicrobial resistance. This has resulted in an increased interest in medicinal plants since 30–50% of current pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals are plant-derived. The question we address in this review is whether plants, which produce a rich diversity of secondary metabolites, may provide novel antibiotics to tackle MDR microbes and novel chemosensitizers to reclaim currently used antibiotics that have been rendered ineffective by the MDR microbes. Plants synthesize secondary metabolites and phytochemicals and have great potential to act as therapeutics. The main focus of this mini-review is to highlight the potential benefits of plant derived multiple compou...
Challenges and Considerations in the Preparation of Novel Antibiotic Phytochemicals
European Journal of Medicinal Plants, 2020
Drug-resistant pathogenic and opportunistic bacteria pose a global health threat. Plants, particularly those employed in traditional (folk) medicine, may provide a source of antimicrobials compounds possessing novel mechanisms of action with which to combat current and emerging infectious diseases. However, experimental designs in ethnobotanical investigations of this type are complicated by several factors. Among these are chemotype variations among plants and plant parts, and potential antagonistic, additive or synergistic effects between plant compounds. These efforts are further hindered by a lack of standardized applicable chemical extraction methods in the field, which makes assessment and comparison of experimental results difficult. This overview thus seeks to provide insight into these complicating factors, give a brief historical survey of ancient investigations into antibiotics, and identify some of the strengths and weaknesses of the various modern methods and techniques...
Bacterial Pathogenesis and Antibacterial Control
The alarming growth of the number of antibiotic resistant bacteria and difficulties in treatment of infections have initiated a search for new antibacterial compounds and develop new alternative strategies in combating bacterial infections. Plant-derived compounds could exhibit a direct antibacterial activity and/or an indirect activity as antibiotic resistance modifying compounds, which, combined with antibiotics, increase their effectiveness. This ability of plant active substances reflects in modification or blocking of resistance mechanism so that bacterium becomes sensitive to antibiotic or the antibiotic acts when in lower concentrations. The systematic screening of plant-derived bioactive compounds, including those which can synergistically act with antibiotics, as resistance modifying agents represents a potential approach to overcome bacterial resistance. Therefore, the goals of this chapter are (i) an update of literature review on synergism between plant extracts and antibiotics, (ii) presentation of experimental results of synergistic activity of selected plant extracts and antibiotics and (iii) concluding remarks.
A Natural Alternative to Conventional Antibiotics
Research Journal of Pharmaceutical, Biological and Chemical Sciences, 2014
Natural sources of treatment have long been sought by humans as a safe alternative to conventional, synthetic medications and antibiotics in order to avoid their complications. The repeated use of antibiotics, especially in minor illnesses results among other side effects and complications, in weakened immunity, antimicrobial resistance, and susceptibility to fungal infections as that caused by Candida albicans. The prolonged use of antibiotics also may lead to gastrointestinal tract disturbances, which usually results in discontinuation of the treatment. We have studied a natural therapy consisting of Allium sativum, Zingiber officinale and Apis mellifera for their potential use in infections. Each component was extracted and prepared according to standard methods and in-vitro tested as a single component and in combination on Staph. aureus, Strep. pyogenes, E. coli and Candida albicans and compared with the standard amoxicillin disk. The combination proved effective in-vitro and hence in-vivo testing was carried out on albino mice to test for antibacterial and analgesic activities as well as prophylactic potential. From both the in-vitro and in-vivo testing, it is concluded that these herbs are effective as antibacterial agents.
Synergistic effects of natural products and commercial antibiotics
2020
Context: The antimicrobial resistant era requires advances in the approaches and technologies to find new treatments. The enhancement of the antimicrobial activity of commercially available drugs (CADs) by natural products (NPs) has successful mixtures (e.g., clavulanic acid and amoxicillin). Objective: To systematically review reports of synergistic effects of CADs and NPs against opportunistic microbial strains from 2010 to April 2016. Methods: The databases and search engines PubMed, Medline, Scifinder, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Scholar Google were systematically searched. Among the keywords utilized were: synergistic effects natural products and antibioitcs, botanicals and antibiotics bioassays, plant extracts interaction with antibioitics and antibiotic adjuvant bioassays. Only synergistic results were tabulated and analyzed according to CADs, NPs and strains. Results: A set of 76 studies that reported in vitro synergistic effects of CADs and NPs against gram−positive or gram−nega...
Pharmaceutica Analytica Acta
The word antibiotic emerges from antibiosis mean against life; it is also because of the fact that antibiotics affect our life. Antimicrobial drug use is rampant not only in therapeutics but also in livestock production leading to continuous contamination of our environment. Indiscriminate use of antibiotics has led to emergence and spread of antimicrobial drug resistance in microbes including pathogens leading to an imbalance in the microbiota of our system and the environment. Ominous distribution of antimicrobial drug resistance in microbes, and still then the use of antimicrobials cause several social, economic and psychological complications. At present the challenges are several with us, viz.: 1) The antibiotics, once considered miracle drugs, are now not miraculous and there is hardly any antibiotic available to treat Multiple Drug Resistant (MDR), Extended Drug Resistant (XDR), and Total Drug Resistant (TDR) microbes with a promise to cure; 2) There are no alternatives to antibiotics at hand or insight at present; 3) There are no policies to regulate antimicrobial drug use in most of the developing world if any they have not been implemented; 4) Antimicrobial drug-resistant strains are everywhere even in environment naive to human invasion; 5) Those are susceptible may get MDR strains from their clinicians; and 6) Clinicians usually ignore the physiological and psychological effects of antimicrobials while recommending the therapy and are least bothered for the side effects of antimicrobial chemotherapy. In treatment of number of infections, two or more drugs are however, the therapeutic efficacy of the combination depend interactions of drugs combined. Synergistic combinations help to reduce emergence of resistant mutants, toxicity, exhibit more antimicrobial activity and more effective against mixed infections. However, only little is understood about the combination of herbal antimicrobials and antibiotics. Herein the existing information on the synergy between antibiotics and herbal antimicrobials is reviewed.