Role of herbal medicine for controlling coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) disease (COVID-19)

International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation (IJRSI) | Volume VIII, Issue II, February 2021 | ISSN 2321–2705

Role of herbal medicine for controlling coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) disease (COVID-19)

Ravindra B. Malabadi^*1, Neelambika T. Meti², Raju K. Chalannavar^{3
1*, 3}Department of Applied Botany, Mangalore University, Mangalagangotri-574199,
Mangalore, Karnataka State, India
²Plant Biotechnology Laboratory, Rajiv Gandhi Institute of IT and Biotechnology, Bharati Vidyapeeth University, Pune-Satara Road, Katraj, Pune – 411046, Maharashtra State, India
*Corresponding author

Abstract: This review paper highlights the use of herbal medicine in the management of the coronavirus disease COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, which has caused a worldwide outbreak of respiratory illness. This is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), which is zoonotic infecting both animal and human. Vaccines are the most promising solution to mitigate new viral strains. The Indian system of holistic medicine known as “Ayurveda” plays an important role in controling the viral disease SARS-CoV-2 and other health disorders. Dietary therapy and herbal medicine could be a complementary preventive therapy for COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2). Plants have been used as a expression systems for the production of diagnostic reagents and pharmaceutical proteins often described as ‘molecular farming. On the basis of literature survy presented, some of the plant secondary metabolites that showed prominent antiviral activity against coronaviruses SARS-CoV-2 through impeding the main machinery used in their pathogenesis and replication cycle. The in vitro, in vivo, and in silico investigations revealed numerous plant-derived compounds with promising anti- SARS-CoV and anti- SARS CoV-2 activity. Therefore, this review gathered all antiviral plants in a single platform to facilitate the laboratory-based research for the development of novel drug/molecular therapeutics to overcome the SARS-CoV-2 and future pandemic situations. Further detailed clinical trial experiments should be conducted for the scientific validation.

Keywords: Coronavirus, covid-19, antiviral, herbal medicine, social distancing, vaccine,

Introduction

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has swept the world and poses a significant global threat to lives and livelihoods (Wu et al., 2020a, 2020b; Shi et al., 2020; V’kovski et al., 2020; Hoffmann et al., 2020; Lima et al., 2020; Yang, 2021; Shin et al., 2020). The coronavirus outbreak has been declared as a global health emergency and represents one of the greatest risks to global health, as the coronavirus has a tendency to infect a large number of human populations (Wu et al., 2020a, 2020b; Zhou et al., 2020a, 2020b; Shanmugaraj et al., 2020).

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