Review of antiviral and immunomodulatory effects of herbal medicine with reference to pandemic COVID-19

ABSTRACT

The pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus is the great-est issue facing global health due to its rapid expansion. Given this scenario, the phytotherapy has demonstrated its importance since time immemorial providing therapeutic in-novations. In this context, a review of the official bibliographic references of the country was carried out, crossing them with the Natural medicine database of the Karolinska Institute, ob-taining 25 medicinal plants with antiviral and immunomodu-latory effects. Then, three databases were used Scopus, Google Scholar and BVS-MTCI, which through a focused screening in both effects for RNA viruses, it was left 79 ar-ticles, corresponding to 14 medicinal plants;of these plants, 7 presented anti-coronavirus effects Sambucus nigra, Echi-nacea purpurea, Astragalus membranaceus, Glycyrrhiza gla-bra, Eucalyptus globulus, Aloe vera, and Camellia sinensis;the last three from these, in addition, have a potential effect against SARS-CoV-2, and for this reason, an in-depth study of their therapeutic properties is proposed.