The role of natural products in discovery of new anti-infective agents with emphasis on antifungal compounds

Abstract

Infectious diseases have had an enormous impact throughout the centuries representing 25 % of the disease burden in the adult population, partly as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. At present, these represent a significant cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide remaining the leading cause of pediatric mortality in most developing countries. Unfortunately, the arsenal of available antimicrobial agents for the treatment of infectious diseases is insufficient to protect people over the long term. The main reasons for this poor prognosis are the unavoidable antimicrobial resistance, the new emerging infections and the re-emergence of old infections. Regarding the latter, new outbreaks of the same disease appear from time to time in different parts of the world. That is the case of cholera, which was the cause of death of 13 % of the population in Cairo in 1831, and in October of 2010 has re-appeared in Haiti having killed at least 142 people in rural central areas of the country and left more than one-thousand people infected.