INTRODUCTION: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an important global problem affecting health care and leading to the inability to treat infections caused by pathogens. The increasing resistance and limitations of the number of antimicrobials increases the demand for new potential drugs from various sources.
AIM: The purpose of the review article is to present knowledge about essential oils of the Myrtaceae family as possible alternatives to address AMR.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: The literature in PubMed, Google Scholar and ScienceDirect was searched and analyzed.
RESULTS: Essential oils are natural products and because of their multi-component chemical composition, there is no evidence of emerging resistance of bacterial strains to them. They are a promising alternative to address AMR.
CONCLUSION: The increase in resistance to almost all classes of antibiotics, combined with a limited number of new antimicrobial agents, leads to the need to search for and implement new therapeutic agents. Analysis of literature data from a scientific database shows promising antimicrobial effects of essential oils, proven mostly in experimental studies. A larger number of studies that investigate the activity of the multicomponent blend of essential oils, targeting the most abundant components they contain, are needed.
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