Herbal Therapy for Burn Wound Infections

Burns are a major global public health problem, accounting for an estimated 180,000 deaths annually. The majority of burn-related deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. Considering the importance of treating infected burn wounds with the least adverse effects, we aimed to search the literature to find new treatments for infected wounds using medicinal plants.
The search process was carried out using various databases including Google Scholar, ScienceDirect, Web of Science, MEDLINE, PubMed, Scopus, and the Cochrane Library. We searched for relevant original and review articles (published in English or Persian) using the following keywords: herbal extract, herbal medicine, burn infection, and wound infection.
Overall, we found approximately 100 articles related to the use of medicinal plants for treatment of wounds or infections. According to these studies, main constituents of plant extracts were carvacrol, flavonoids, terpenoids, phenolic diterpenes, and phenolic acids. Most studies assessed the antimicrobial activity by determining minimum inhibitory concentration and minimum bactericidal concentration using the disc diffusion method.
Given the favorable antimicrobial activity of medicinal plants, it is recommended to use them for treatment of burn wound infections.