A Brief Review on Medicinal Plants-At-Arms against COVID-19

Shivani Srivastava; Fangzhou He; Yuanding Huang; Meng Niu; Alok Adholeya; Weng Kung Peng

doi:10.1155/2023/7598307

A Brief Review on Medicinal Plants-At-Arms against COVID-19

Interdiscip Perspect Infect Dis. 2023 Apr 24:2023:7598307. doi: 10.1155/2023/7598307. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Shivani Srivastava¹, Fangzhou He², Yuanding Huang², Meng Niu³, Alok Adholeya¹, Weng Kung Peng²

Affiliations

¹ Centre for Mycorrhizal Research, Sustainable Agriculture Division, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), TERI Gram, Gwal Pahari, Gurugram 122001, India.
² Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, University Innovation Park, Dongguan 523-808, China.
³ China Medical University, Shenyang, China.

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic caused by the novel SARS-CoV-2 has impacted human livelihood globally. Strenuous efforts have been employed for its control and prevention; however, with recent reports on mutated strains with much higher infectivity, transmissibility, and ability to evade immunity developed from previous SARS-CoV-2 infections, prevention alternatives must be prepared beforehand in case. We have perused over 128 recent works (found on Google Scholar, PubMed, and ScienceDirect as of February 2023) on medicinal plants and their compounds for anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity and eventually reviewed 102 of them. The clinical application and the curative effect were reported high in China and in India. Accordingly, this review highlights the unprecedented opportunities offered by medicinal plants and their compounds, candidates as the therapeutic agent, against COVID-19 by acting as viral protein inhibitors and immunomodulator in (32 clinical trials and hundreds of in silico experiments) conjecture with modern science. Moreover, the associated foreseeable challenges for their viral outbreak management were discussed in comparison to synthetic drugs.

Publication types

Review