Attitudes and beliefs regarding the use of herbs and supplementary medications with COVID-19: A systematic review

Abderrezzaq Soltani; Myriam Jaam; Zachariah Nazar; Derek Stewart; Abdullah Shaito

doi:10.1016/j.sapharm.2022.11.004

Attitudes and beliefs regarding the use of herbs and supplementary medications with COVID-19: A systematic review

Res Social Adm Pharm. 2023 Mar;19(3):343-355. doi: 10.1016/j.sapharm.2022.11.004. Epub 2022 Nov 13.

Authors

Abderrezzaq Soltani¹, Myriam Jaam², Zachariah Nazar³, Derek Stewart⁴, Abdullah Shaito⁵

Affiliations

¹ QU Health, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar. Electronic address: asoltani@qu.edu.qa.
² Clinical Pharmacy and Practice Department, College of Pharmacy, QU Health, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar. Electronic address: myriamj@live.co.uk.
³ Clinical Pharmacy and Practice Department, College of Pharmacy, QU Health, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar. Electronic address: znazar@qu.edu.qa.
⁴ Clinical Pharmacy and Practice Department, College of Pharmacy, QU Health, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar. Electronic address: d.stewart@qu.edu.qa.
⁵ Biomedical Research Center, College of Medicine, And Department of Biomedical Sciences, College of Health Sciences, Qatar University, P.O. Box 2713, Doha, Qatar. Electronic address: abdshaito@qu.edu.qa.

Abstract

Background and aim: There is growing interest in using herbs and supplementary medications to treat and/or prevent COVID-19, evidenced by multiple reports exploring their effectiveness and safety. From a health psychology perspective, the desire to use herbs and supplementary medications to prevent and/or treat COVID-19 is a health behavior which is attributed to attitudes and beliefs. This systematic review critically appraised and synthesized the data from studies investigating these attitudes and beliefs.

Methods: EMBASE, PubMed, ScienceDirect, Scopus, Cochrane (library), and WebOfScience were searched from inception to December 13, 2021 for studies investigating attitudes and beliefs on the use of herbs and supplementary medications to treat and/or prevent COVID-19.

Results: A total of 17 articles were identified for inclusion. All except one were of cross-sectional design. Participants across most studies had a positive attitude towards using herbs and supplementary medications. They believed that herbs and supplementary medications were effective and were confident in their value in preventing and/or treating COVID-19 symptoms. The majority of included studies had significant flaws in study design and reporting, including inconsistent definitions of herbs and supplementary medications, a lack of theoretical models and conceptual frameworks underpinning the study of beliefs and attitudes, in addition to methodological issues of robustness affecting the validity and reliability of data.

Conclusion: The use of herbs and supplementary medicines to prevent and/or treat COVID-19 could well be driven by a positive attitude stemming from beliefs of effectiveness and safety. There is a need for well-designed studies on attitudes and beliefs that are driven by health behavior theories to permit generalizability of findings and establish more conclusive relationships between beliefs, attitudes and the decision to use herbs and supplementary medications to treat and/or prevent COVID-19.

Keywords: Attitudes; Beliefs; COVID-19; Herbs; Supplementary medications; Systematic review.

Publication types

Systematic Review
Review

MeSH terms

Attitude
COVID-19*
Cross-Sectional Studies
Health Behavior
Humans
Reproducibility of Results