Promising antimicrobial agents from some Latin American medicinal plants against disease-causing pathogens in humans and animals

Muñoz-Acevedo A.; González M.C.; Castillo O.J.; Guzmán C.P.; Rodríguez-Acosta S.; Cervantes-Díaz M.; de Alburquerque R.D.D.G.; Ruppelt B.M.; Flores N.; Giménez-Turba A.; Ramón-Farias F.; Cano-Asseleih L.M.; Rengifo E.; Vargas-Arana G.; Rai M. · Promising Antimicrobials from Natural Products (2022) · DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-83504-0_11

Resumen

According to WHO and FAO, the current global problem in public health/environmental which is of high economic impact is the lack of effectiveness/resistance to "antimicrobials" by many pathogens (e.g., Staphylococcus spp., Mycobacterium spp., Klebsiella spp., Pseudomonas spp., Helicobacter spp., Listeria spp., Salmonella spp., Acinetobacter spp., Aspergillus spp., Candida spp.) that cause disease in humans (e.g., septicemia, nosocomial, respiratory, STD) and food-producing animals (e.g., cattle, goats, poultry), which could be related to food security. Nonetheless, since 1990s, new antimicrobials (new chemical libraries or structures/scaffolds) have not been found in the pharmaceutical industry, but their "new agents" (commercially available drugs) were redesigned from earlier times and prospecting for new discoveries was no longer relevant. In that sense, the WHO has mentioned/emphasized the need to research/develop new antimicrobials since the available therapeutic options are limited, due to the low investment in development and research of new drugs, as well as the few incentives to search/isolate/synthesize new molecules that allow to combat/control/reduce the problem of resistance. Among this search for therapeutic options, the WHO itself has recommended the inclusion of traditional and complementary medicine as a promising alternative that, if it does not completely solve the problem of resistance, at least temporarily contributes to the solution as a new treatment. Thus, nature has provided from some plants certain constituents (isolated/in mixture) with a high biological potential against particular pathogenic microorganisms that cause human/animal diseases. In this chapter, specific cases of molecules/essential oils/extracts of certain medicinal plants from some Latin American countries (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru) that have been effective against disease-causing pathogens in humans and/or animals are described. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022. All rights reserved.