Antifungal Activity of Brazilian Medicinal Plants against Candida Species

Abstract

Due to the resistance of Candida sp. to the usual antifungal, the demand for active principles found in the plants has been the target of diverse studies around the world. There are few in vivo and human studies on the antifungal activity of medicinal plants in the mouth. Native and imported medicinal plants, used by the Brazilian population for traditional medicine use, are the subject of study in this chapter. Thirty-eight Brazilian plants were related to information on species, family, name, used part, and medical indication of popular use. All the species mentioned had their extracts tested in vitro against C. albicans, C. tropicalis, C. krusei, C. parapsilosis, among other species that occur more frequently in the mouth. In the articles consulted, there is a great variation in Candida species tested and in minimum inhibitory concentration. The in vitro studies serve as information for the continuity of studies on the best performing plants, validate the popular belief about the use, and provide subsidies for the development of new products that are effective in the control of oral and systemic candidiasis and that are cheap and accessible for the population.

Antiproliferative Cancer Cell and Fungicidal Effects of Yellow and Red Araçá (Psidium cattleianum Sabine) Fruit Extract

“…are still poorly studied. Several mechanisms of action have been proposed from the rupture of the cellular membranes, which seems to interrupt the cell cycle through the synthesis of proteins and the alteration of the yeast DNA [52]. We believe that the araçá extracts used in our study had expressive antifungal activity in Candida spp.…”

Biological properties and phytochemical characterization from Miconia chamissois Naudin aqueous extract

“…The species M. argyrophylla has also been shown to have antimicrobial activity against Candida sp. by the dilution method (for the aqueous extract, methanolic extract, and extract in dichloromethane) (Rodrigues et al, 2014). Ahmad et al (1998) showed that alcohol appears to extract antimicrobial compounds better than water.…”

Antifungal activity of phytotherapeutic preparation of Baccharis species from argentine Puna against clinically relevant fungi.

“…The presence of several identified compounds in this work would support the Baccharis extracts antifungal activity. Several flavonoids identified have been regarded as antifungal agents (Afifi et al, 1991;Candiracci et al, 2011;Santos and Pereira, 2018;Weidenbörner and Jha, 1997) in particular, some methylated flavones (Figure 4 and Figure S1) could be of particular attention due to more liposolubility (Meragelman et al, 2005). On the other hand, clerodanes diterpenes are bioactive compounds isolated from several plant species with several biological properties reported, including antifungal activity (Li et al, 2016).…”