| dc.description.abstract | Antibiotics kill bacteria or prevent them from
multiplying. Antibiotic resistance among bacteria
occurs when an antibiotic loses its ability to
control and kill bacterial growth. Antibiotic
resistance is a survival trait of bacteria. Some
bacteria develop resistance to many antibiotics
becoming multidrug resistant (MDR) strains.
New antibiotics are required to treat infections
caused by MDR bacteria. The World Health
Organization has recently announced the urgent
need to develop new antibiotics to combat 12
MDR bacterial pathogens. However, many
pharmaceutical companies are terminating their
research and development endeavours on new
antibiotics. Combination therapy using more
than one antibiotic is a viable option to manage
drug-resistant bacteria. Other approaches such
as vaccines and bacteriophages will also be
useful to maintain the efficacy of current and
new antibiotics. Another strategy is to restore
or enhance the activity of antibiotics against
drug-resistant bacteria by using the antibiotics
together with compounds that inhibit resistance
mechanisms. Some plant compounds have shown
considerable resistance-modifying activities in
vitro. Crude extracts of some medicinal plants have
also been effective in potentiating the activity of
commonly used antibiotics against drug-resistant
bacteria. The use of plant compounds and their
combinations, together with common antibiotics,
is a powerful strategy to mitigate the problem of
antibiotic resistance. The potent combinations
of plant compounds and antibiotics determined
from in vitro experiments could be assessed by in
vivo studies to determine the clinical relevance of
such combinations. | en_US |
