Infectious Diseases

Medicinal plants and bacterial diseases.

Infectious diseases.

Infectious diseases are disorders caused by pathogenic microorganisms like bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa and multicellular parasites. These diseases are also called as communicable or transmissible diseases since they can be transmitted from one person to another via a vector or replicating agent. Infectious diseases account for about half of the deaths in tropical countries (Khosravi and Behzadi, 2006).

Bacterial diseases are a type of infectious diseases caused by pathogenic bacteria. It is notable that majority of bacteria are non pathogenic and are not harmful to human health. Some bacteria are even helpful and necessary for the good health. Millions of bacteria normally

Once bacteria enter the body, the immune system of the body recognizes the bacteria as foreign intruder and tries to kill or stop them from multiplying. However, even a healthy immune system is not always able to stop the bacteria from reproducing and spreading. As a result bacteria thrive in the body and emit toxins which damage cells and tissues that consequently results in the symptoms of bacterial disease (Wrong Diagnosis website, 2010).

General symptoms of bacterial diseases include fever, chills, headache, nausea and vomiting. Bacterial infections if untreated can lead to serious and life threatening complications such as sepsis, kidney and liver failure, toxic shock, and even death. Pathogenic bacteria have always been considered as a major cause of morbidity and mortality in humans.

Commonly occurring pathogenic bacteria are Neisseria meningitidis, which can cause meningitis, Streptococcus pneumoniae, which can cause pneumonia, Helicobacter pylori, which can cause gastric ulcers, Escherichia coli which can cause food poisoning, Salmonella typhi, which can cause typhoid, and Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause skin and other infections (Wrong Diagnosis website,

The global emergence of multi-drug resistant (MDR) bacteria is increasingly limiting the effectiveness of current drugs and significantly causing treatment failure. Bacterial resistance to chemically unrelated antimicrobial agents is public health concern and may be caused by over-expression of multi-drug resistant efflux pumps (Djeussi et al., 2013).

There are various factors responsible to the emergence of resistance such as, misuse and overuse of antibiotics, patient related factors, inappropriate prescriptions by the physicians, self-medications especially young adults, use of broad spectrum antibiotics and synergistic combinations, unnecessary promotions by pharmaceutical industry, untrained staff in microbiological testing laboratories, lack of awareness with the new guidelines recommended for antimicrobial testing etc. (Bhatia and Narain, 2010; Khan et al.,