Natural anti-biofilm agents can help treat infections

In this article, researchers from different universities in Hong Kong and China summarized recent studies and discussed the discovery of natural anti-biofilm agents from plants. Their review, which focused on herbs with both known and unknown bioactive ingredients and mechanisms of action, was published in the journal Chinese Medicine.

• Biofilm is defined as a natural form of bacterial growth that is ubiquitous in the environment.
• When microorganisms form biofilms, they develop resistance to negative environmental influences such as antibiotics and antimicrobial agents.
• Quorum sensing (QS) is a mechanism used by cells to communicate with each other. QS plays an important role in biofilm development and balances the environment when bacteria density becomes high.
• Because biofilms are implicated in infectious diseases and the spread of multi-drug resistance, there is an urgent need to discover new antibacterial agents that can regulate biofilm formation and development.
• According to the researchers, the results of many studies indicate that bioactive ingredients from plants have antimicrobial and chemo-preventive properties which allow them to modulate biofilm formation.
• The researchers also discussed the development of new techniques for the extraction and identification of natural anti-biofilm substances from plants.
• They also highlighted anti-biofilm therapeutic substances that are currently undergoing clinical trials.

The researchers believe that these newly discovered natural anti-biofilm agents are promising candidates that can provide novel strategies for treating biofilm-related infections in humans.

Read the full article at this link.

Journal Reference:

Lu L, Hu W, Tian Z, Yuan D, Yi G, Zhou Y, Cheng Q, Zhu J, Li M. DEVELOPING NATURAL PRODUCTS AS POTENTIAL ANTI-BIOFILM AGENTS. Chinese Medicine. 20 March 2019;14(1). DOI: 10.1186/s13020-019-0232-2