Natural Products Solution against Superbugs: A Challenge of Biodiversity in a Public Health Issue

Abstract

Antimicrobial resistance is currently one of the greatest challenges and threats to the health of populations, in which two fundamental problems come together, such as the inappropriate use of antibiotics as well as the implementation of deficient measures for the control of infections [1]. Because the use of an antimicrobial inevitably leads to the emergence of resistance, a constant search for new molecules is required with which to deal with outbreaks and decrease the infection rate [2]. This indiscriminate use of anti-infectives both in humans and in agriculture makes possible the appearance of multidrug-resistant strains (MDR). Between them the most reported MDR microorganisms are methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa resistant to fluoroquinolones, Klebsiella pneumonia resistant to ceftazidime, Acinetobacter baumannii, and isoniazid-rifampicin resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis [3]. Additionally, this very serious public health problem is complicated by the lack of availability and research into new active medicines against MDR microorganisms [4]. So several initiatives have been proposed as 10 × 20 initiative from Infectious Disease Society of America that propose the global union of several leading institutions in order to develop 10 new antimicrobial drugs by 2020 [5,6]. In this order of ideas, to assume this great challenge makes it necessary to overcome the mechanisms of microbial defense that induce resistance as biofilms that allows the survival of microorganisms in their interior through chemically induced environmental changes that favor their adaptation [7-9]. Also, research into new antibiotics has decreased because they have a lower rate of return than drugs used to treat chronic diseases [10,11].