Anti-tubercular substances produced by plants

Tuberculosis is one of the common causes of death worldwide, and according to the World Health Organization, in 2015, about 10.4 mln people globally is suffering from that disease. Despite great development in medicine and discovery of many antimycobacterial drugs, tuberculosis remains an unsolved problem. The populations of countries in Africa, Asia and South America have difficult access to hygiene, medical care and medicines, and they therefore resort to consulting traditional practitioners who mainly use drugs from natural sources which they prepare themselves. Plants are the biggest source of such medicines and are used as extracts, decoctions or powders, often without any evidence of their actual activity. Isolates from plants sometimes contain unknown substances or some second metabolites of microorganisms. In vitro studies have shown that some of these medicines have effective antimycobacterial properties, even against clinical, resistant strains. This is hopeful in the situation where more and more cases of tuberculosis prove to be resistant to standard drugs. Extracts of medicinal plants are often synergistic with synthetic drugs. Substances with insufficient MIC can be a basis for derivatives which have better properties. This thesis summarizes the current international knowledge of the use of plant substances used in the treatment of tuberculosis that could be potential new antituberculous drugs.