Role of ethno-phytomedicine knowledge in healthcare of COVID-19: advances in traditional phytomedicine perspective

What is it about?

Ethnomedicinal plants have been used for symptoms related to COVID-19 as antiviral, anti-infective, anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, antipyretic, and lung–gut immune boosters. Traditionally used medicinal plants have the ability to inhibit virus entry and viral assembly, bind to spike proteins, and membrane proteins, and block viral replications and enzymes. This review portrays advances in traditional phytomedicine by bridging the knowledge of ethno-phytomedicine and COVID-19 healthcare. Advances in traditional phytomedicines against COVID-19 are controlled clinical trials, notably the roles in the gut microbiome. Targeting the gut microbiome via medicinal plants as prebiotics is also found to be an alternative and potential strategy in the search for a COVID-19 combat strategy.

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Why is it important?

Here, the necessity to build collaborations among those with ethnomedicinal plant knowledge, scientists, and technologists to develop the most efficient and safest adjuvant therapeutics against the pandemic of the twenty-first century, COVID-19, has been realized.

Perspectives