13th Conference on Medicinal and Aromatic Plants of Southeast European Countries (CMAPSEEC 2026)

Faced with emerging bacterial resistance, antibiotics are increasingly losing their therapeutic effectiveness. In Tunisia, as in the rest of the world, an assessment of antibiotic prescriptions shows that only few of them are rational, and studies show a correlation between antibiotic consumption and resistance rates. As part of efforts to combat this health burden, studies are focusing on the search for new molecules to combat the diverse mechanisms of bacterial resistance. A significant proportion of these studies have focused on plants, as it is ambitious to investigate what nature might offer.
This study regroups two parts an empirical part that consisted to plant extract assays and a literature part that was an analyze of WHO published reports (bacterial resistance) and some papers concerning antibacterial effect of molecules or plant extracts. Aqueous extracts of studied plants were done by water maceration and prepared at desired concentrations. Effect of extracts on cell signaling and cell cycle of astrocytes model were carried out using flow cytometry.
The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that more than 40% of antibiotics were obtained without medical advice in some countries. Without immediate intervention, antimicrobial resistance, currently responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, could lead to up to 10 million deaths per year by 2050. In other hand our preliminary results showed that plant extract act in cell signaling, and cell cycle, as example Artemisia campestris promotes apoptosis (increase in Sub G1 and decrease in G1, G2).
Discussing national and international studies that have focused on the antibacterial properties of plants (especially medicinal plants) showed that it seems a promising sources of new antibiotics. In fact, technology advance plays an important role in plant research aimed at purifying, characterizing, and detecting the biological activity of molecules. But, despite these in vitro and in vivo effects, phytotherapy is still limited in routine medical practice.