Coffee: A Rich Source of Antimicrobial and Antiviral Compounds

摘要

Background: Coffee intake represents an essential tradition in many people's lives all aroundthe world: the success of this beverage is mainly due to its unique flavour and its well-known character-istic of reducing sleep. Coffee is usually associated with caffeine, nevertheless, hundreds of other mole-cules are involved in the very heterogeneous composition of the beans. Many studies revealed that sev-eral of these compounds can influence our health, because of their bioactive activities. Coffee appearsas an antioxidant, antidiabetic, anticancer, and antidepressant agent and the data about these propertieshave been already reviewed. Conclusion: In the present work, the antimicrobial and the antiviral activities will be discussed. Atten-tion will also be focused on single compounds present in beans: some coffee constituents appear as val-id candidates to develop new efficient drugs and the available data show that more efforts are needed tofully investigate the potential of coffee against pathogens.