Infectious Diseases: Pharmaceutical Nanoscience Targeted Drug Delivery

Infectious diseases are one of the greatest challenges of our new era. Due to their high incidence and outbreak rate, they can affect human health. Furthermore, the use of conventional drugs to treat infectious diseases is gradually being exhausted due to increasing rates of resistance. Herbal medicines and natural ingredients may also be a good resource for drug production. Several innovations, including the development of nano-drug delivery systems, have new mechanisms of action and various loadings for herbal and non-herbal treatments; this helps decrease the pathogenicity of infectious diseases. In addition, these nano-drug delivery systems provide a good opportunity to improve the efficacy of herbal and non-herbal treatments. They have also been used to deliver target medicinal agents, increase solubility, improve bioavailability, extend half-life for herbal and non-herbal treatments, increase stability, minimize adverse effects, and tissue engineering. Nanocarriers are advanced engineering tailors that control the physicochemical properties of nanoparticles for infectious diseases, leading to targeting by passive or active mechanisms. In this chapter, we highlight the advances in nanocarriers loaded with herbal and nonlherbal agents for treating infectious diseases.

Keywords: Herbal treatment, Infectious diseases, Nanoparticles, Non-herbal treatment, Targeted drug delivery.