Public Health and Tropical Medicine, College of Public Health, Medical and Veterinary Sciences, James Cook Universitygrid.1011.1, Townsville, QLD, Australia.
World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Vector-Borne and Neglected Tropical Diseases, College of Public Health, Medical and Veterinary Sciences, James Cook Universitygrid.1011.1, Townsville, QLD, Australia.
Clin Microbiol Rev. 2021 Dec 15;34(4):e0034820. doi: 10.1128/CMR.00348-20. Epub 2021 Sep 8.
About half of the world's population and 80% of the world's biodiversity can be found in the tropics. Many diseases are specific to the tropics, with at least 41 diseases caused by endemic bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungi. Such diseases are of increasing concern, as the geographic range of tropical diseases is expanding due to climate change, urbanization, change in agricultural practices, deforestation, and loss of biodiversity. While traditional medicines have been used for centuries in the treatment of tropical diseases, the active natural compounds within these medicines remain largely unknown. In this review, we describe infectious diseases specific to the tropics, including their causative pathogens, modes of transmission, recent major outbreaks, and geographic locations. We further review current treatments for these tropical diseases, carefully consider the biodiscovery potential of the tropical biome, and discuss a range of technologies being used for drug development from natural resources. We provide a list of natural products with antimicrobial activity, detailing the source organisms and their effectiveness as treatment. We discuss how technological advancements, such as next-generation sequencing, are driving high-throughput natural product screening pipelines to identify compounds with therapeutic properties. This review demonstrates the impact natural products from the vast tropical biome have in the treatment of tropical infectious diseases and how high-throughput technical capacity will accelerate this discovery process.
世界上约有一半的人口和 80%的生物多样性都可以在热带地区找到。许多疾病是热带特有的，至少有 41 种疾病是由地方性细菌、病毒、寄生虫和真菌引起的。由于气候变化、城市化、农业实践的改变、森林砍伐和生物多样性的丧失，热带疾病的地理范围正在扩大，因此这些疾病引起了越来越多的关注。虽然传统药物在治疗热带疾病方面已经使用了几个世纪，但这些药物中的活性天然化合物在很大程度上仍然未知。在这篇综述中，我们描述了热带特有的传染病，包括其病原体、传播方式、最近的重大疫情和地理位置。我们进一步回顾了这些热带疾病的现有治疗方法，仔细考虑了热带生物群落的生物发现潜力，并讨论了一系列用于从自然资源开发药物的技术。我们提供了具有抗菌活性的天然产物清单，详细说明了来源生物及其作为治疗方法的有效性。我们讨论了技术进步，如下一代测序，如何推动高通量天然产物筛选管道，以识别具有治疗特性的化合物。本综述表明，来自广阔热带生物群落的天然产物在治疗热带传染病方面具有重要影响，高通量技术能力将加速这一发现过程。
