A Review of the Medicinal and Antimicrobial Properties of Carissa spinarum L.

Medicinal plants have different biological activities and their natural products are an important source of biologically active ingredients. These plants and their secondary metabolic constituents have been used in traditional medicine and they are a source for the synthesis of many important drugs used in modern medicine. Numerous biologically active plant components have been discovered by ethnopharmacological evaluation and the medicinal plants offer the local population with an immediate and accessible therapeutic product used to treat different diseases in animals and humans. Carissa spinarum L. belongs to the family Apocynaceae and its parts such as root, leaf, and fruits have medicinal properties that are of help to both humans and animals. Different solvents and advanced techniques are employed in the extraction of phytochemical constituents of Carissa spinarum to study its potential medicinal applications. The phytochemicals occur naturally in the plant leaves, fruits, stems, bark, seeds, and roots that defend and protect the plant against various diseases. The antimicrobial activities of Carissa spinarum revealed a potential antibacterial activity against several bacteria that includes Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Bacillus subtilis, Salmonella typhi, Escherichia coli, Escherichia coli ATCC25922, Escherichia coli DSM 1103, Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 35032, Pseudomonas fluorescence, Proteus mirabilis, Mycoplasma mycoides and Streptococcus species. The current review presents a comprehensive analysis of the medicinal applications of Carissa spinarum.