Perspectives on antibacterial activities of traditional Chinese medicine and its potential mechanisms
10.3969/j.issn.1005-1678.2016.04.04
- VernacularTitle:中药抗细菌感染机理之浅见
- Author:
Sai YANG
;
Qiao GUO
;
Kangmin DUAN
- Publication Type:Journal Article
- Keywords:
Chinese herbs;
disease-causing agents;
antibiotics;
pathogenic bacteria;
drug target
- From:
Chinese Journal of Biochemical Pharmaceutics
2016;36(4):15-19
- CountryChina
- Language:Chinese
-
Abstract:
The discovery and use of antibiotics is one of the most important breakthroughs in medical history.However, the uprising and spread of the drug-resistance bacterial pathogens have posed a great threat on human health once again.There is an urgent need to develop new antibiotics.Traditional Chinese medicine contains a large volume of bioactive substances suited for novel antibiotic development.However, clinical use of antibiotics of Chinese medicine originis are very rare despite the fact that Chinese medicine has been used for infectious diseases for many years.In this paper, we propose a new mechanism of action for Chinese medicine in treating infectious diseases based on our experimental data.Unlike conventional antibiotics which kill pathogens or inhibit their growth, the traditional Chinese medicine probably function through repressing bacterial pathogenicity.That is, they are actually “antipathogenic drugs”.There are several advantages these antipathogenic drugs possess over traditional antibiotics, including that pathogens are less likely to develop resistance and the drugs have less effect on normal members of the human microbe.
