Antimicrobial Properties of Teas and Their Extracts in vitro

Abstract

Tea has recently received the attention of pharmaceutical and scientific communities due to the plethora of natural therapeutic compounds. As a result, numerous researches have been published in a bid to validate their biological activity. Moreover, major attention has been drawn to antimicrobial activities of tea. Being rich in phenolic compounds, tea has the preventive potential for colon, esophageal, and lung cancers, as well as urinary infections and dental caries, among others. The venture of this review was to illustrate the emerging findings on the antimicrobial properties of different teas and tea extracts, which have been obtained from several in vitro studies investigating the effects of these extracts against different microorganisms. Resistance to antimicrobial agents has become an increasingly important and urgent global problem. The extracts of tea origin as antimicrobial agents with new mechanisms of resistance would serve an alternative way of antimicrobial chemotherapy targeting the inhibition of microbial growth and the spread of antibiotic resistance with potential use in pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and food industries.

Keywords:

• Tea
• Camellia sinensis
• antimicrobial properties
• phenolic compounds
• food borne pathogen