Abstract

Tuberculosis (TB) is highly infectious disease causing morbidity and death. Its causative organism is a contagious bacterium, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The incidence of tuberculosis is increasing worldwide due to the emergence of drug resistance bacteria. The resistance is being developed in Mycobacterium tuberculosis against both the first line as well as the second line drugs used for the treatment. The tuberculosis control programme is being complicated and failed to get the desired impact due to the development of multi-drug resistant (MDR) and extensively-drug resistant (XDR) strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. So, there is a critical requirement to discover and produce newer anti-TB drugs with unique drug targets. Medicinal plants have been used for curing the diseases from ancient time. Medicinal plants are the novel sources for the production of alternate medicines for the treatment of TB caused by MDR and XDR strains. Plants produce a number of different kinds of secondary metabolites such as Alkaloids, Coumarins, Flavonoids, Polyphenols, Terpenoids, Quinines, etc. which have antimicrobial activity; thus may be useful in control of tuberculosis. These compounds do not contribute directly in growth and development but used by the plants for their defense. On the basis of various sources in the literature, about 72 phytochemicals constituents responsible for anti tubercular activity isolated from different plants have been explained along with their structure. Most effective isolated compounds from plants are plumbagin, maritinone, 3, 3’-biplumbagin, aloe emodin, epigallocatechin and umckalin. These phytochemicals are helpful for the treatment of MDR, XDR type of tuberculosis. This review describes an overview of the current synthetic medicines used for treatment of TB and the work carried out on anti tubercular plants along with their phytochemicals.

Keywords: Extensively drug resistance (XDR), medicinal plants, multi drug resistance (MDR), Mycobacterium tuberculosis, phytochemical.