Natural antibacterial agents

Human is undoubtedly part of nature. So would the over-use of natural antibacterial agents (e.g. garlic) lead to antibiotic resistance?

Reply 1

AEH

8

Why would the 'natural' against the 'synthetic' differ in the way they cause pressures of natural selection in a bacterial population? Its a rather false distinction really - if you can find a chemical in nature and then synthesise it in a lab (So that both molecules are identical and a blind investigation would not be able to distinguish them), what does natural actually mean?

Not synthesised?

OP

For my definition, natural as in food sourced (not GM foods of course) and not man made.

Examples of these 'natural' antibacterial agents are garlic, chilli and lemon.

Manmade as in chemically modified from original compounds of nature and those synthetically produced. Examples of these are penicillin, mouthwash, toothpaste.

Reply 4

chrisjar

Catchetat

For my definition, natural as in food sourced (not GM foods of course) and not man made.

Examples of these 'natural' antibacterial agents are garlic, chilli and lemon.

Manmade as in chemically modified from original compounds of nature and those synthetically produced. Examples of these are penicillin, mouthwash, toothpaste.

I think the point AEH is trying to make is that whether they are synthesised or not would have no effect on antibiotic resistance. Surely they would all be prone to such resistance developing but I would guess that there is little research into/evidence for resistance to 'natural' antibiotics as, when you require an antibiotic, you will be prescribed a synthesised one such as penicillin, amoxicillin etc rather than be prescribed garlic! I would have no idea of the efficacy of garlic, chilli or lemon but I assume its significantly less than man-made antibiotics, or we'd all be using them!
Also if they somehow were not affected by antibiotic resistance, chances are we'd all be hailing them as some kind of wonder cure that cannot be defeated! The fact that this has not occured seems to answer the original question to me.

Natural antibacterial agents

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