Abstract
Natural products are known to contribute significantly in primary healthcare and the development of drugs for various ailments, including infectious diseases. In recent decades, the increasing problem of the emergence of multidrug resistance in bacteria and the slow progress in the discovery and registration of new antibiotics has necessitated the search for new antiinfective drugs with novel modes of action and/or the use of alternative strategies. Interference with quorum sensing of bacterial pathogens to attenuate their virulence is considered a novel antiinfective drug target. In the last decade, there has been interest among the scientific community to explore broad-spectrum, nontoxic and stable quorum sensing inhibitors. Efforts are being made in this direction to screen and evaluate natural products from medicinal plants and other sources. The present review indicates that a large number of medicinal plant extracts, phytocompounds and other natural products inhibit quorum sensing regulated functions in different bacterial pathogens. It appears that quorum sensing inhibitors of plant origin, e.g., garlic and derivatives, have shown promising efficacy in animal models and could be developed as antiinfective drugs. Numerous quorum sensing inhibitors have shown synergy with antibiotics and could be further explored to obtain effective combination formulations combating drug-resistant bacterial pathogens.