Future of Natural Products from Plants in the Struggle with Emerging Diseases: Case of Food-Borne Pathogens and Leishmaniasis

ABSTRACT

Plants have been used medicinally throughout history. Before the beginning of the 19th century, many herbs were considered conventional medicines and were included in medical curricula and formularies. In the United States two important factors fostered a schism between the use of mainstream drugs and herbal therapies: (1) the development of a pharmaceutical industry and (2) the formation of the Food and Drug Administration which created regulatory changes. It is estimated that nearly 80% of the world's population use plants as drugs and one in three Americans use some type of herbal remedy. Consumer interest in “natural” therapies is on the rise in the U.S. and elsewhere and corporate researchers are searching for new drugs among ancient remedies and new classes of compounds to combat infectious diseases worldwide. Infectious diseases continue to be the foremost cause of death worldwide. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported a 58 percent rise in deaths from infectious diseases since 1980. Recent outbreaks underscore the potential for sudden appearance of infectious diseases in currently unaffected world populations. What can be done to determine which natural alternatives are relatively safe, efficacious, and affordable to the majority of the world's citizenry? This chapter will review the status and use of some of the most widely used medicinal herbs and plants and discuss the efficacy of some of these on two devastating diseases worldwide: leishmaniasis, a protozoal disease, and food-borne diseases, caused by a variety of pathogenic bacteria.

KEYWORDS:

• Infectious diseases
• medicinal plants