LITERATURE REVIEW
Antimicrobial agents are essentially important in reducing the global burden of infectious diseases. However, as resistant pathogens develop and spread, the effectiveness of the antibiotics is diminished. This type of bacterial resistance to the antimicrobial agents poses a very serious threat to public health, and for all kinds of antibiotics, including the major last-resort drugs, the frequencies of resistance are increasing worldwide. Therefore, alternative antimicrobial strategies are urgently needed, and thus this situation has led to a re-evaluation of the therapeutic use of ancient remedies, such as plants and plant-based products, including honey (Mandal and Mandal, 2011).
2.1 TRADITIONAL MEDICINE
2.1.1 Honey
The antibacterial activity of honey was first recognized in 1892; however, it has a limited use in modern medicine due to lack of scientific support. Honey is the nectar collected from flowers by bees. It contains 15% to 20% water and 80% to 85% sugar. The remainder of the honey is made up of proteins, enzymes, and nonessential amino acids. The use of traditional medicine to treat infection has been practiced since the origin of mankind, and honey produced by Apis mellifera (A. mellifera) is one of the oldest traditional medicines considered to be important in the treatment of several human ailments. Currently, many researchers have reported the antibacterial activity of honey and found that natural unheated honey has some broad-spectrum antibacterial activity when tested against pathogenic bacteria, oral bacteria as well as food spoilage bacteria. In most ancient cultures honey has been used for both nutritional and medical purposes. The belief that honey is a nutrient, a drug and an ointment has been carried into our days, and thus, an alternative medicine branch, called apitherapy, has been developed in recent years, offering treatments based on honey and other bee products against many diseases including bacterial infections (Mandal and Mandal, 2011; Mama et al., 2019).