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Review Article | DOI: https://doi.org/10.31579/2692-9406/088
Department of pharmaceutics, RBVRR women’s college of pharmacy, affiliated to Osmania University, Hyderabad, India.
*Corresponding Author: Abbaraju Krishna Sailaja, Department of pharmaceutics, RBVRR women’s college of pharmacy, affiliated to Osmania University, Hyderabad, India.
Citation: A Alekhya, Abbaraju K Sailaja. (2022). Herbal Medicine for the Treatmentof Viral Infections: A Systemic Review. Biomedical Research and Clinical Reviews. 6(1); DOI: 10.31579/2692-9406/088
Copyright: © 2022 Abbaraju Krishna Sailaja, This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attributiosn License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Received: 21 October 2021 | Accepted: 27 December 2021 | Published: 07 January 2022
Keywords: different antiviral herbs; viral diseases; marketed herbal products for viral infections
The term “Antiviral agents” has been defined in very wide terms as substances other than a virus or virus containing vaccine or specific antibody which can build either a protective or therapeutic effect to the direct measurable advantage of the virus infected host. Viruses are simple in form which are very tiny germs. They comprise of genetic material inside of a protein coating. Viruses cause amicable infectious diseases like common cold, flu and warts. They also cause severe diseases such as HIV/AIDS, Ebola, avian influenzas, dengue virus and COVID-19. Viral diseases are very complex and are easily spread. Herbs and herbal medicines were the foremost in treating infections from centuries over the world in every civilization. Modern science has narrowed the importance of herbal medicine in the past two centuries. But, the side effects and new varieties of diseases creating challenges to modern science. So, usage of herbal medicines is again attaining interests these days. Herbal products for different treatments have achieved a lot of popularity in the last couple of decades. Thus, discovering novel antiviral drugs is of extremely important and natural products are an excellent source for such discoveries. There are many herbs which are excellent sources for the antiviral properties to treat viral infections. This review provides the verified data on the herbal substances with antiviral activity, and some of the herbal marketed antiviral agents like CORONIL TABLETS from Patanjali and different companies had made an attempt to treat viral infections in this pandemic situation. Therefore, herbal plants proved to be a major resort for the treatment of diseases and sickness by traditional healers in many societies.
A virus is a tiny contagious agent that replicates inside the cells of living host. When infected, the host cell is enforced to rapidlygive rise to thousands of identical copies of the original virus. Unlike most living things, viruses do not have cells that divide; new viruses gather in the infected host cells. Viruses are made up of two or three parts which includes genes, these genes are composed of encoded biological information of the virus and are fabricated from either DNA or RNA. Genes present in the viruses are shielded with a protein coat [1].
A viral infection is a proliferation of a harmful virus inside the body which infect the host by launching their genetic material into the cells and hijacking the cells internal machinery to make more virus particles. Viral diseases are exceedingly widespread infections caused by viruses. They cause many transmissible diseases like common cold, influenza, yellow fever, rabbis, measles, many forms of diarrhea, hepatitis, polio. Even currently many viral infections are still causing huge threat to human being such as coronavirus, HIV, SARS, Ebola virus, Dengue virus, etc. where there are no efficient conventional medications or vaccines for most of these viruses. There are different kinds of viral infections which are as follows.
There are many viral infections which effect the human body at different sites [2].
Respiratory viral diseases:
Respiratory viral infections are transmissible and commonly affect the upper or lower parts of respiratory tracts.Based on symptoms and local epidemiology viral infections are clinically determined. This is severely affected in older patients and infants. Common symptoms of respiratory viral infections include: body aches, fever, coughing or sneezing, runny or stuffy nose [3].
Examples: Coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), flu, common cold, parainfluenza virus infection, adenovirus infection, respiratory syncytial virus infection.
Gastrointestinal viral diseases:
Gastrointestinal viral infections, in which the virus affects the digestive tract which usually lead to a condition called gastroenteritis, commonly called as stomach flu. Common symptoms of gastrointestinal viral infections include: vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal cramps [4].
Examples: norovirus infection, rotavirus infection, astrovirus infection.
Exanthematous viral diseases:
In this the viruses causes skin rashes and many more symptoms; these infections are highly contagious [5, 6].
Examples: Measles, rubella, chickenpox, smallpox, chikungunya virus infection.
Hepatic viral diseases:
The hepatic viral diseases which cause inflammation of the liver known as viral hepatitis. Sometimes it may be caused by other viruses such as cytomegalovirus and the yellow fever virus [7].
Examples: Hepatitis type A, B, C, D & E.
Cutaneous viral diseases:
Cutaneous viral infections cause lesions or papules are formed on the skin. In many cases, these lesions can stick around for a long period of time or come back after disappearing for a while [8].
Examples: warts (including genital herpes), oral herbs, genital herbs, molluscum contagiosum.
Hemorrhagic viral diseases:
Hemorrhagic viral infections are dreadful conditions that involves damage to your circulatory system. Symptoms by these infections include high fever, body aches, bleeding in internal organs, weakness, bleeding under the skin, bleeding from the mouth or ear [9].
Examples: Ebola, Lassa fever, dengue fever, yellow fever, Marburg hemorrhagic fever.
Neurologic viral diseases:
Some viruses even they can affect brain and surrounding tissues, causing neurologic viral diseases. This can result in the range of symptoms like fever, confusion, drowsiness, seizures, coordination problems [10].
Examples: polio, viral meningitis, viral encephalitis, rabies.
Herbal antiviral medicine: an introduction
The term “Antiviral agents” has been defined in very wide terms as substances other than a virus or virus containing vaccine or specific antibody which can build either a protective or therapeutic effect to the direct measurable advantage of the virus infected host. All over the world, herbal medicines are reviewed to be one of the most significant areas of interest in traditional medicine systems. Classic antiviral drugs are often costly and ineffective due to viral resistance and cause severe adverse effects, with that in mind naturally based herbal medicines will be a proper alternative for treating viral diseases. World Health Organization (WHO) has also highlighted in 1978, on the importance of scientific research into herbal medicine and all the developing countries has started research on their native medicinal plants and to get register to the WHOs list of “essential drugs” [11].
WHO has published a report in which it is mentioned that nearly 80% of people living in rural areas depends on medicinal plants as primary health care system and their practices entirely based on knowledge of traditional use of medicinal plants? According to a FAO report, at least 25% of drugs used in modern pharmacopoeia are acquired from plant products. Some of the herbs or medicinal plants having antiviral properties against different viruses and these are used since ancient times because of their stronger therapeutic effect.
Herbal medicines and purified natural products furnish a rich resource for novel antiviral drug development. Recognition of the antiviral mechanisms from these herbal agents has shed light where these agents interact with the viral life cycle, such as viral entry, replication, assembly and release, furthermore on the targeting of virus host specific interactions.
Herbs with antiviral activity:
Since ancient times, many herbs have been used as natural treatments for various illnesses, including viral infections. Due to the presence of phytochemicals and potent plant compounds, many herbs help fight against viruses. Common kitchen herbs like basil, sage and oregano, as well as lesser-known herbs like Astragalus and Sambucus have powerful antiviral effects against numerous viruses that cause infections in humans. Many researchers have conducted research of herbs but they could not mention whether the small dose or high dose of the concentrated extract would have the same effects on humans. There are many herbs like basil, sage, ginger, ginseng, etc.; which have antiviral properties, some of them are mentioned below.
Advantages of Herbal Medicines [23]
Disadvantages of Herbal Medicines
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a new communicable disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that belongs to the coronavirus family [24]. By using antiviral drugs and immunomodulators, the research has showed that the drugs were not remarkably effective against the disease. Then, people believed that herbal immunomodulators or natural medicinal compounds might show effective results for the treatment of COVID-19 than the synthetic antivirals. During this pandemic situation many institutions and researchers are working for the herbal agents which can show better results. Some herbal agents extracted from various plants includes Echinacea, Cinchona, Curcuma longa, withania somnifera, Tinospora cardifolia and Curcuma xanthorrhiza, are considered to be good for the treatment of COVID-19 [25].
Among infected patients, COVID-19 manifests various unspecific symptoms, ranging from mild to severe which includescough (76%), fever (98%), sputum production (28%) and headache (8%). Presently, there is no specific treatment for COVID-19, people in the society and researchers are trying to find best way to cure the disease by using herbal medicines [26].
Many researchers and institutions are trying hard for the medicine and everyone are waiting for the medicine at this pandemic situation, the first ever clinically tested, evidence based ayurvedic medicine for curing deadly coronavirus has launched into the market by Patanjali Ayurveda Limited using traditional medicinal herbs. It has been named “CORONIL” [27, 28].
The Coronil kit consist of 3 products which are divyaCoronil tablets, divyaSwasarivati which are oral tablets used as immunity boosting agent and third product is Anu tali which is a liquid dosage form taken as nasal drops [29]. This medicine is purely herbal medicine which includes herbs like Giloy (Tinospora cardifolia), Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) and Tulsi (Ocimum sanctum), etc. This herbal medicine good impact on patients who are affected with the coronavirus. This herbal medicine has huge benefits in strengthening the immune system and also are effective in curing symptoms like sore throat, nasal congestion, fever etc. not only giloy, ashwagandha and tulsi they have used 100 herbal compounds for the preparation of Coronil, therefore it showed good effect in patients suffering from coronavirus at this pandemic time.
Development of antiviral resistance is mainly correlated with viral fitness and the potency and genetic barrier to resistance of anti-viral agents. Potency of a drug is defined by time taken by drug to repress the viral replication. More hurriedly a drug suppresses the replication, lower the risk of developing anti-viral resistance. The anti-viral agents generally obstruct steps in virus-specific replication. These agents are capable of targeting viral enzymes, thus interfering with viral nucleic acid synthesis. There are many novel anti-viral agents developed currently to treat viral infections. The problem of antiviral resistance makes most of the anti-viral drugs ineffective. Still a lot of work has to be done to further investigations in to its actual potential for human use.
There is an urgent need for the development of new formulations having effective antiviral properties. In present scenario there are severe side effects for the pharmaceutical drugs, advanced antiviral herbal formulations with less side effects, inherently safer for all, more effective and less expensive herbal formulations should be developed for treating viral infections. Herbal medicines and purified natural products come up with a rich resource for anti-viral drug development.
Altogether, the declaration submitted in this work supports the notion that medicinal plants have promising therapeutic potential, especially in case of herbal products against viral infections. Promising results were observed for herbal antiviral agents by conducting a number of epidemiological and animal model studies for cellular and sub-cellular targets. Knowledge based on traditional system of medicines, various herbal formulations from medicinal plants for treating different viral infections has still to be developed. Many countries around the world are depending on their research for the formulation of herbal medicines against viral infections. There are several infectious diseases caused by viruses, many western medications and vaccines are available but these are not fully effective against these infections due to the mutating strains of the viruses such as influenza virus. Herbal treatments help in stopping the viral replication and shortens the duration of illness. At this pandemic situation of COVID-19, herbal agents are useful for the treatment of infections like CORONIL TABLETS and many other herbal formulations has to developed because the herbs having low cost, minimum toxicity almost found everywhere in the country, it has potential to enhance immunity to fight against the COVID-19 and for treating different diseases which are causing severe impact and now a days individual are more interested in herbal and ayurvedic medicines.