Antimicrobial activity of extracts and phthalides occurring in Apiaceae plants.

Apiaceae plants exhibit a broad spectrum of activities, for instance, antithrombotic, hypotensive, antioxidant, and insecticidal. They also provide a source of phthalides, which display antimicrobial activity. Considering the fact of rising resistance of both bacteria and fungi against commonly used antibiotics, developing of new naturally derived compounds is undeniably attractive approach. To our best knowledge, there are no other reviews concerning this subject in the literature. In view of above, an attempt to summarize an antimicrobial potential of isolated compounds and extracts from Apiaceae plants has been made, by specifying techniques of activity determination and methods of extraction. Techniques of antimicrobial activity evaluation are mainly based on bioautography, diffusion, and dilution methods. Therefore, we focused on in vitro data described in literature so far.