Plant Extracts With Antibiotic Effect

Abstract

This chapter tries to describe the most important plant extracts and their bioactive compounds which determine the antibiotic activity. Pharmacological assays performed for each plant extract are presented, including the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) as the most used experimental method to determine antimicrobial activity. Also, the effective associations between classic antibiotics and plant extracts with antibacterial are presented. The mechanisms of action are deeply explained to the extent that they are known and discovered by in vitro and in vivo studies. Plant-derived compounds have different mechanism of action as antibiotics. They can have other target sites than traditional antimicrobials and subsequently having different mechanisms of action against microbes. Ultimately, this chapter tries to be an invitation to use plant extract as an alternative to chemical, synthetic antibiotics, or used complementary, synergistic for better therapeutically results.