The role of traditional medicine in the fight against SARS-CoV-2 Chapter uri icon

abstract

  • In December 2019 the new coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), was discovered in Wuhan, China. Since then, its infectious disease (coronavirus infectious disease-19, COVID-19) has spread widely with more than 100 million confirmed cases and 2 million confirmed deaths as of February 6, 2021, with cases in 219 countries, areas, or territories. On January 30, 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak to be a public health emergency of international concern (WHO, 2020). Since then, researchers around the world have been working in developing vaccines and antiviral medicines. Despite this the actual pandemic situation needs an alternative and secure measure, and traditional medicine could be an answer. Medicinal plants and isolated compounds are promising therapies against the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 to treat and control COVID-19. Up until now a few percentages of approved drugs are unaltered natural products or botanical drugs. Plants contain phytochemicals with antioxidant, antiinflammatory, and immunomodulatory properties. Consequently, a combination of active natural products with approved antiviral drugs could be an alternative to improve the biological effect and/or produce a synergistic effect as supportive agents to minimize clinical symptoms. © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

publication date

  • 2022-01-01