Synergistic potential of essential oils with antibiotics for antimicrobial resistance with emphasis on mechanism of action: A review

Antimicrobial resistance is a growing worldwide problem, and treatment failures are associated with enormous human health effects. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a highly adaptable variant of bacteria exhibiting antimicrobial resistance, making it a formidable superbug. It became one of the leading causes of hospital and community-associated infections. This pathogen is resistant to most clinically available antibiotics by adopting several different genetic and molecular mechanisms. Such types of pathogen evolution and their resistance mechanisms have raised significant public health concerns, urging the exploration of novel therapeutic strategies. Essential oils (EOs) from various plants have garnered attention for their potential as alternative antimicrobial agents. Its different compounds synergistically led to enhance the potency and efficacy of antibiotics. Hence, this review focuses on recent advances used in the combination of EOs with antibiotics for therapeutic effects and the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance, various methods and mechanisms adopted for the action in synergistic combinations are discussed. Additionally, the etiology of MRSA as a superbug, and prospects for the development of the formulations are elaborated. Future study types would provide valuable insights into exploring different synergistic combinations of EOs and antibiotics to address the growing problem of drug resistance among bacterial pathogens.