Antibacterial activity of Nigerian medicinal plants as panacea for antibiotic resistance: A systematic review

Background & Aim: Antibiotic resistance is one of the global public health threats facing modern health care system. The development of new effective agents has been challenging. Thus, the interest in the use of medicinal plants for the treatment of bacterial infections has increased. Therefore, the aim of this study was to review Nigerian medicinal plants with antibacterial activity. Experimental: This study retrieved data from published articles on Nigerian medicinal plants with antibacterial activity. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) guidelines were adopted. A systematic search of PUBMED CENTRAL was conducted. The included studies were those published in peer-reviewed English language journals between 1st January 2000 and 31st December 2020 and reported on the key terms; Nigerian medicinal plants with antibacterial activity. Results: The database searches yielded a total of 817 results, and 765 articles were ineligible. After reviewing relevant titles and abstracts, a total of 52 articles on antibacterial were retrieved for full text review. After extensive review of each article, 13 articles were excluded and a total of 39 articles were retained. Furthermore, 4 articles were also removed due to lack of specific compounds stated. Finally, only 35 articles met the inclusion criteria for the assessment of antibacterial activity of Nigerian medicinal plants. The narrative synthesis of the included studies revealed different plants families with broad activities against gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. Among the bacterial isolates, Staphylococcus aureus was tested more, followed by Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa and the bacteria were subjected to 97 medicinal plants species for antibacterial activity. Recommended applications/industries: The results from this study reveal that many Nigerian medicinal plants contain bioactive compounds with potentials of antibacterial activity and suggest that they could be employed as alternative in the treatment of bacterial infections after safety profiles is appraised

UCP-LF and other assay methods for schistosome circulating anodic antigen between 1978 and 2022

Detection of circulating anodic antigen (CAA) is known for its high sensitivity in diagnosing schistosomiasis infection, even in low-prevalence settings. The Up-Converting Phosphor-Lateral Flow (UCP-LF) assay developed in 2008 presented greater sensitivity than other assay methods in use for CAA detection. Our study aims to comprehensively review all studies conducted in this area and thus generate informed conclusions on the potential for adopting the UCP-LF assay for diagnosing this important yet neglected tropical disease. Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) guidelines, we generated search criteria to capture all studies in English journals available in the Scopus and PubMed databases on 20 December 2022. A total of 219 articles were identified, and 84 that met the inclusion criteria were retrieved and eventually included in the study. Twelve different assay methods were identified with a noteworthy transition from enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to the UCP-LF assay, a laboratory-based assay that may be applicable as a point-of-care (POC) diagnostic test for schistosomiasis. Reducing the time, cost, and dependence on specialized laboratory skills and equipment, especially relating to the trichloroacetic acid extraction step and centrifugation in the UCP-LF CAA assay may go a long way to aid its potential as a POC tool. We also propose the development of a CAA-specific aptamer (short protein/antigen-binding oligonucleotide) as a possible alternative to monoclonal antibodies in the assay. UCP-LF has great potential for POC application