Protective roles of ginseng against bacterial infection
Authors:Ye-Ram Kim1 and Chul-Su Yang1
doi: 10.15698/mic2018.11.654
Volume 5, pp. 472 to 481, published 19/09/2018.
1 Department of Molecular and Life Science, Hanyang University, Ansan 15588, S. Korea; Department of Bionanotechnology, Hanyang University, Seoul, 04673, S. Korea.
Keywords:
Panax ginseng, Ginsenoside, Bacteria, Antibacterial activity
Corresponding Author(s):
Conflict of interest statement:
The authors declare that they have no conflict of inter-est.
Please cite this article as:
Ye-Ram Kim and Chul-Su Yang (2018). Protective roles of ginseng against bacterial infection. Microbial Cell: in press.
© 2018 Kim and Yang. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.
Abstract:
Ginseng (Panax ginseng Meyer) is a well-known traditional herbal medicine that plays a protective role against microbial attack. Several studies have revealed its anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, and immune-modulatory effects. Ginseng contains several components that vary according to the year of cultivation and the processing method used, such as heating, drying, and steaming, which induce different degrees of pharmacological activities. This review discusses the antibacterial effects of ginseng against pathogenic bacterial infections. We describe how ginseng regulates pathogenic factors that are harmful to the host and discuss the therapeutic potential of ginseng as a natural antibacterial drug to combat bacterial infectious disease, which is a global public health challenge. The components of ginseng could be novel alternatives to solve the growing problem of antibiotic resistance and toxicity.