Antioxidants: Natural Antibiotics

The aim of this current piece of writing is to draw the attention of readers and researchers toward the natural antioxidants that can take the place of synthetic antibiotics to avoid bacterial resistance and gastrotoxicity/nephrotoxicity. Antioxidants such as polyphenols, vitamins, and carotenoids are the organic compounds mainly extracted from natural sources and dominantly involved in boosting the defense system of organisms. The main public health-related issue over the globe is ever-growing bacterial resistance to synthetic antibiotics, which is being continuously reported during the last decade. Further, the pipeline of the development of new synthetic antibacterial agents to replace the resistant antibiotics in clinical set-up is gradually drying up. This scenario originated the concept to revive the interest toward natural antibacterial products due to their chemical diversity, which provide important therapeutic effect and make the microbes unable to copy them for creating resistance. Natural products, especially polyphenols had been seen in antioxidant, antibacterial, anticancer, anti-inflammation, and antiviral activities with encouraging results. In this chapter, we will focus over the role of natural antioxidants as antibacterial agents