Phytochemicals as Nutraceuticals - Global Approaches to Their Role in Nutrition and Health

Book Abstract

Infectious diseases are the world?s leading cause of premature deaths, killing almost 50,000 people every day. In recent years, drug resistance to human pathogenic bacteria has been commonly reported from all over the world (N?guessan et al., 2007). The abusive and indiscriminate use of antimicrobial compounds over many years is the main factor responsible for the appearance of the phenomenon of bacterial resistance to such compounds (Andremont, 2001). Withincreased incidence of resistance to antibiotics, natural products from plants could be interesting alternatives (Lu et al., 2007; Mbwambo et al.,2007). Some plant extracts and phytochemicalsare known to have antimicrobial properties,and can be of great significance in therapeutictreatments. In the lastfew years, a number of studies have been conducted in different countries to demonstrate such efficacy (Benoit-Vical et al., 2006; Senatore et al., 2007; Singhet al., 2007). On the other hand, free radicals are known to be the major cause of various chronic and degenerative diseases.