A Comprehensive Review on Medicinal Plants as Antimicrobial Therapeutics: Potential Avenues of Biocompatible Drug Discovery

Abstract

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 compounds and the importance of phytochemicals for the development of biocompatible therapeutics. In addition, this review focuses on the diverse effects and efficacy of herbal compounds in controlling the development of MDR in microbes and hopes to inspire research into unexplored plants with a view to identify novel antibiotics for global health benefits.

“Smart” Antimicrobial Nanocomplexes with Potential to Decrease Surgical Site Infections (SSI)

“…The combinations of TCA, Cinn, AgNP, and PI were expected to have synergistic antimicrobial effects. Pure TCA and the Cinn bark extract were compared to investigate the effect of pharmacokinetic synergists in the natural plant extract Cinn with its manifold bioactive compounds [61,73]. Biogenic synthesis with plant extracts usually induce broad particle size distribution in most cases but can be also shapeand size determining [74,75].…”

Plant Secondary Metabolites in the Battle of Drugs and Drug-Resistant Bacteria: New Heroes or Worse Clones of Antibiotics?

“…SMoPs can affect the microbial cell in several different ways. These include the disruption of cytoplasmic membrane function and structure (including the efflux system), interaction with the membrane proteins (ATPases and others), interruption of DNA/RNA synthesis and function, destabilization of the proton motive force with leakage of ions, prevention of enzyme synthesis, induction of coagulation of cytoplasmic constituents, and interruption of normal cell communication (quorum sensing) [15,21,91]. For many classes of SMoPs, these mechanisms have been well studied.…”

“…Together, these groups make up about ninety percent of all SMoPs [14]. The minor groups include saponins, lipids, essential oils, carbohydrates, ketones and others [6,15].…”

“…This topic is extremely relevant today with the emergence and spread of completely drug-resistant strains of microorganisms. Many questions remain despite the fact that the antibacterial properties of secondary plant metabolites have been studied for a long time [15,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]. First, in the huge sea of substances that are produced by plants, some are already known about, but still insufficiently studied and some are not yet discovered.…”

Prevalence of COVID-19: A Look behind the Scenes from the UAE and India

“…Polyphenols, flavonoids and further plant based natural products have high potential in the fight against pathogens [82][83][84]. A combination between biosynthesized nanocomposites with iodine content may have promising antimicrobial effects [69,85].…”