Recent Advances in Isolation and Antimicrobial Efficacy of Selected Strychnos Species: A Mini Review

Treatments of various diseases in pharmacology through herbs have begun a long time ago. Herbal medicines have been in practice since time immemorial, and over 80% of the global population depends on medicinal plants to treat disease. Medicinal plants contain active ingredients for functional therapeutics purposes, such as antimicrobial agents. Examples of those medicinal plants are found in different plant species belonging to different families such as Boraginaceae, Loranthaceae, Urticaceae, Plantaginaceae, Loganiaceae, Lamiaceae, among others. The genus, Strychnos belongs to the family of Loganiaceae and consists of about 200 species. Isolated compounds and antimicrobial of a few species from the Strychnos genus have been reported recently. This review aimed to detail the isolated compounds and antimicrobial efficacy of selected Strychnos species reported within 2014 – 2021. Based on the MIC result, the antimicrobial efficacy indicated that extracts of S. madagacariensis and S. pungens have the highest activity against S. typhi, extract of S. lucida have highest activity against B. cereus and S. pyogenes, extract of S. spinosa showed better activity against K. pneumonia and B. subtilis, extract of S. nux-vomica has highest activity against S. aureus, P. aeruginosa and E. faecalis while extract of S. colubrine exhibited excellent activity against C. perfringens. About thirty compounds belonging to alkaloids, terpenoid, terpene, steroids and other class and their pharmacological properties were reviewed in this study. This is concluded that the Strychnos species under this review contains a wide variety of compounds belonging to different classes of phytochemical, possessing significant antimicrobial activity.