Shuchi Kaushik

Negative effects and resistance of available antibiotics are increasing day by day. Due to toxicity of drugs and constant development of bacterial resistance motivates researchers to search new antimicrobial agents and give much attention towards the exploration of natural antioxidants. Plants produce a wide range of secondary metabolites with active antioxidative activities with therapeutic potential. Different parts of plants such as root, leaves, stem etc are rich in bioactive compounds which have natural antioxidant and antimicrobial activity. New chemotherapeutic agents may be developed from plants products replacing the available synthetic drugs as plants are the potential sources of secondary metabolites. The antimicrobial activity of different plant leaves was demonstrated in the study which indicates that there is possibility of extracting alternative antibiotic substances from these plants for the development of newer antibacterial agents. Although this study provides scientific understanding but also envisaged the need to further investigate other pharmacological properties along with equal potential as antibiotics.