Figure - available from: Phytochemistry Reviews
This content is subject to copyright. Terms and conditions apply.
Source publication
Whilst Western research for the COVID-19 crisis focuses on vaccination, in East Asia traditional herbal prescriptions are studied for SARS-CoV2 therapy. In Japan, Maoto (Ephedrae herba 4 g, Armeniacae semen 4 g, Cinnamomi cortex 3 g, and Glycyrrhizae radix 2 g, JPXVII) is used based on clinical evidence for its effect on early phase influenza (also...
Similar publications
Flavonoids are secondary plant metabolites normally found as pigmented compounds in plants. Quercetin and rutin are two important and commonly found flavonoids in nature and exhibit wide pharmacological effects such as antioxidant, anticarcinogenic, antiviral, anti-inflammatory, antidiabetic, and hepatoprotective activities as well as antimicrobial...
Background: Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic non-specific inflammatory bowel disease that invades the colonic mucosa and is characterized by ulceration. It has been listed as one of the modern refractory diseases by the World Health Organization, and has become a hot issue in the field of Gastroenterology of Traditional Chinese medicine. This s...
Aspergillus fumigatus is an important pathogen causing invasive aspergillosis, which is associated with high morbidity and mortality in immunocompromised people. However, the treatment of A. fumigatus infection is a growing challenge, owing to the limited availability antifungal agents and the continual emergence of drug-resistant strains. Drug rep...
Recently, the world has been dealing with a destructive global pandemic COVID-19 infection, since 2020; there were millions of infections and hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide. With sequencing generations of the virus, around 60 % are expected to become infected during the pandemic. Unfortunately, no drug or vaccine has been approved becaus...
Houttuynia cordata Thunb. fermentation product (HCFP) is widely used in Thailand as a dietary supplement for immune support with no experimental verification. The aims of this study were to investigate the safety and immunomodulation of HCFP in healthy volunteers and to study its effect on antiretroviral drugs in Sprague Dawley rats. The basic char...
Citations
... For example, Ephedrae Herba has traditionally been used for weight loss in the United States and has been reported to be related to liver injury in Western literature [44][45][46] . However, according to theory, Ephedrae Herba (Ma Huang) does not cause hepatotoxicity and can be used for short-term treatment of influenza [47,48] . Green tea extract, which is also used for weight loss in Western countries, has recently emerged as a research hotspot for inducing liver injury [49] . ...
In recent years, adverse reactions and events associated with traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) and herbal medicines (HM) have frequently occurred. In particular, with regard to the safety of newly discovered TCM that have been deemed “toxic,” providing a scientifically based answer and developing effective solutions is challenging. Owing to the complexity of TCM/HM products and lack of systematic research, our understanding of the potential causes of TCM/HM-induced liver injury is limited. Therefore, significant advancements in understanding the toxicity of TCM and preventing and managing safety risks are urgently needed to address the safety concerns associated with TCM/HM. Using Polygoni Multiflori Radix (PMR) hepatotoxicity as a typical example, we evaluated the “integrated evidence chain” based on the causality evaluation of TCM-induced liver injury, and confirmed the objective authenticity of PMR hepatotoxicity. Furthermore, we first proposed and established a disease-syndrome-combined toxicology model that was applied to the material basis and analysis of the mechanism of PMR-induced hepatotoxicity. The mechanism hypothesis of “three-factor-induced toxicity” of idiosyncratic hepatotoxicity of TCM was proposed and confirmed. Based on this, the disease characteristics of the population susceptible to PMR idiosyncratic hepatotoxicity were elucidated, and various biomarkers were screened and identified, including the genetic marker HLA-B*35:01 and immunological and metabolomic markers. Finally, the study explored and established a safe medication strategy and method for “host-drug-use” three-dimensional risk prevention and control based on identifying susceptible individuals, controlling susceptible substances, and clinical precision medication. This study provides a foundation for comprehensively understanding the scientific implications of TCM/HM toxic side reactions and establishing scientific and effective risk prevention and control strategies.
... The bark of Cinnamomum spp. plants is known to contain condensed tannins, namely, dimeric, trimeric, and higher oligomeric polymeric proanthocyanidins (fla-van-3-ols) [19,20], of which the compound cinnamaldehyde is the main active ingredient (approximately 49.9%) [12] and has antimicrobial properties. Nabavi and Di Lorenzo [21] used the diskdiffusion method to investigate the antibacterial activities of several C. zeylanicum bark extracts, obtained using different organic solvents (ethyl acetate, acetone, and methanol), that were tested in vitro against Klebsiella pneumoniae 13883, Bacillus megaterium NRS, P.aeruginosa ATCC 27859, S. aureus 6538 P, E. coli ATCC 8739, Enterobacter cloacae ATCC 13047, Corynebacterium xerosis UC 9165, and Streptococcus faecalis DC 74. ...
Raising fish in ponds for an extended period can have an impact on the accumulation of bacteria
that can affect the health of the fish. Using plant extracts is an interesting option to consider for reducing
bacterial contamination in ponds. This study investigated the effectiveness of cinnamon extract in
reducing bacterial contamination in the water used for raising Siamese fighting fish (Betta splendens).
Optimal concentrations of cinnamon extract were determined for microbial reduction in the water used
for the cultivation of these fish. Test the ability to resist infection at the concentrations of cinnamon
extract 1:1, 1:2, 1:4, 1:8, 1:16, and 1:64, against 3 bacterial species (Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus
aureus, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa). The concentrations of cinnamon extract at 1:1 and 1:2 inhibited
all three tested pathogens, while up to 1:4 inhibited S. aureus. Water samples taken from the ponds
for testing were studied at 4 cinnamon extract concentrations: 0, 1, 2, and 3 gL-1. The treated water
samples were collected at 0, 24, and 48 hours to quantify microbial activity. There were significant
(p<0.05) differences among the concentrations, with the numbers of microorganisms in the treated water
at 48 hours being 3.84x105, 2.92x104, 2.69x103, and 2.89x103 CFU mL-1, respectively. The experimental
groups with concentrations of 2 and 3 gL-1 were the most effective in reducing bacteria in the fishpond
after 24 h. Our study demonstrated that cinnamon extract could reduce microbial growth in water used
to raise Siamese fighting fish.
... For centuries, traditional herbal medicines have been widely employed for the management of influenza and colds. Numerous herbs were found to be useful against viral respiratory infections [34]. For example, in Japan, maoto, a popular herbal remedy, has long been used to cure influenza. ...
The epidemic prompted by COVID-19 continues to spread, causing a great risk to the general population's safety and health. There are still no drugs capable of curing it. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) are the two other diseases caused by coronaviruses. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) showed benefits in treating SARS and MERS by preventing the disease early, substantially mitigating symptoms, shortening the treatment period, and minimizing risks and adverse reactions caused by hormone therapy. Although several vaccines have been developed and are being used for the treatment of COVID-19, existing vaccines cannot provide complete protection against the virus due to the rapid evolution and mutation of the virus, as mutated viral epitopes evade the vaccine’s target and decrease the efficacy of vaccines. Thus, there is a need to develop alternative options. TCM has demonstrated positive effects in the treatment of COVID-19. Previous research studies on TCM showed broad-spectrum antiviral activity, offering a range of possibilities for their potential use against COVID-19. This study shed some light on common TCM used for SARS and MERS outbreaks and their effective use for COVID-19 management. This study provides new insights into COVID-19 drug discovery.
... Although the AAI content of the ARR is extremely low, people are still concerned about its safety. In addition, during the epidemic of COVID-19 in Wuhan, QingFeiPaiDuTang (which contains 6 g of ARR as a drug) showed good therapeutic e cacy and could effectively reverse the incidence of severe disease [24,25]. However, the trace amount of AAI in the ARR has seriously affected its promotion in overseas markets and the reputation of traditional Chinese medicine. ...
Aristolochic acids (AAs) are a group of compounds widely found in Aristolochiaceae, and the main toxic component of AAs is aristolochic acid I (AAI). AAI causes severe direct nephrotoxicity and carcinogenicity. Plants containing AAI are widely used around the world; for example, Asari Radix et Rhizoma (ARR) contains trace amounts of aristolochic acid and is still included in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia. Based on the theory of therapy for syndrome differentiation in traditional Chinese medicine, we established a 7-day mouse model of pneumonia and observed that kidney damage in the pneumonia group was significantly lower than that in the healthy group after the same treatment. Subsequently, the carcinogenic metabolite aristolochic acid-DNA adduct standards were synthesized, and assays were established. No adduct formation was detected in our limit of quantification (500 pg/ml) in the ARR group, while the adduct formation in the Caulis Aristolochiae Manshuriensis (CAM) group, whose content of AAI is 900 times that of the ARR, was significantly lower than that in the healthy group in the pneumonia state. Here, we demonstrate that the safety risk of ARR is not high at normal doses. Western blot analysis revealed that the level of the AAI metabolic enzyme NQO1 in the pneumonia group was significantly lower than that in the healthy group. Combined with the transcriptomic results, we speculate that kidney injury and adduct production in the pneumonia group were lower than those in the healthy group because of the ROS-Keap1-Nrf2-NQO1 pathway.
... Papan. has recently been attracting attention for its antiviral activity against various viral infections, including COVID-19, and its related effects, such as a wide range of anti-endotoxin, anti-inflammatory, and immune regulation activities, have also been confirmed [224,225]. Recently, it was reported that the anti-aging effect of this material is based on its antioxidant and antiinflammatory effects [226]. ...
Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory disease that places a great burden on both individuals and society. The use of East Asian herbal medicine (EAHM) in combination with conventional medications is emerging as an effective strategy to control the complex immune-mediated inflammation of this disease from an integrative medicine (IM) perspective. The safety and efficacy of IM compared to conventional medicine (CM) were evaluated by collecting randomized controlled trial literature from ten multinational research databases. We then searched for important key materials based on integrated drug data mining. Network pharmacology analysis was performed to predict the mechanism of the anti-inflammatory effect. Data from 126 randomized clinical trials involving 11,139 patients were used. Compared with CM, IM using EAHM showed significant improvement in the Psoriasis Area Severity Index (PASI) 60 (RR: 1.4280; 95% CI: 1.3783–1.4794; p < 0.0001), PASI score (MD: −3.3544; 95% CI: −3.7608 to −2.9481; p < 0.0001), inflammatory skin lesion outcome, quality of life, serum inflammatory indicators, and safety index of psoriasis. Through integrated data mining of intervention data, we identified four herbs that were considered to be representative of the overall clinical effects of IM: Rehmannia glutinosa (Gaertn.) DC., Isatis tinctoria subsp. athoa (Boiss.) Papan., Paeonia × suffruticosa Andrews, and Scrophularia ningpoensis Hemsl. They were found to have mechanisms to inhibit pathological keratinocyte proliferation and immune-mediated inflammation, which are major pathologies of psoriasis, through multiple pharmacological actions on 19 gene targets and 8 pathways in network pharmacology analysis. However, the quality of the clinical trial design and pharmaceutical quality control data included in this study is still not optimal; therefore, more high-quality clinical and non-clinical studies are needed to firmly validate the information explored in this study. This study is informative in that it presents a focused hypothesis and methodology for the value and direction of such follow-up studies.
... Here we focus on pharmacological interventions to depression. The concept of immunity was not explicitly developed in TCM, although TCM was the first to use immunization for the control of epidemics (Kuchta et al., 2021). It has been shown that most herbs used in TCM have some immunomodulatory effects (Li, 2000;Wu et al., 2015;Zhang et al., 2016;Zhang et al., 2020c;Zhang and Xiao, 2021). ...
The concept of mind-body integration was born in China with a long history and is naturally compatible with the psychoneuroimmunology (PNI). Since PNI was introduced into China in the 1990s, increasingly Chinese researchers from different fields were attracted to the psychoneuroimmunology research of health and disease. This review includes two parts: in the first part, we summarize a brief history of the development of PNI in China from 1992-2012, which mainly happened before the establishment of PNIRSChina in 2013. In the second part, some representative studies in the different fields of PNI conducted in China are reviewed, mainly including conditioned immunity, emotional stress and immunity, and inflammation and depression.
... Traditional medicinal plants and derived natural products have been used for a long time as important remedies for the prevention and treatment of various infectious diseases (Dvorkin-Camiel and Whelan, 2008;Li and Peng, 2013;Qi et al., 2013) and some of them have thus been suggested as potential drug candidates for COVID-19 with minimal adverse effects (Alam et al., 2021;Benarba and Pandiella, 2020;Chandramouli et al., 2021;Kuchta et al., 2021). But, natural agents that have been proven to be active against SARS-CoV-2 variants are limited. ...
The continuous emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants prolongs COVID-19 pandemic. Although SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and therapeutics are currently available, there is still a need for development of safe and effective drugs against SARS-CoV-2 and also for preparedness for the next pandemic. Here, we discover that astersaponin I (AI), a triterpenoid saponin in Aster koraiensis inhibits SARS-CoV-2 entry pathways at the plasma membrane and within the endosomal compartments mainly by increasing cholesterol content in the plasma membrane and interfering with the fusion of SARS-CoV-2 envelope with the host cell membrane. Moreover, we find that this functional property of AI as a fusion blocker enables it to inhibit the infection with SARS-CoV-2 variants including the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron with a similar efficacy, and the formation of syncytium, a multinucleated cells driven by SARS-CoV-2 spike protein-mediated cell-to-cell fusion. Finally, we claim that the triterpene backbone as well as the attached hydrophilic sugar moieties of AI are structurally important for its inhibitory activity against the membrane fusion event. Overall, this study demonstrates that AI is a natural viral fusion inhibitor and proposes that it can be a broad-spectrum antiviral agent against current COVID-19 pandemic and future outbreaks of novel viral pathogens.
... [2][3][4] What's more, Isatidis Radix is widely used in the treatment and prevention of influenza and other viral respiratory infections for hundreds of years in China, and it has been demonstrated that Isatidis Radix has pharmacological effects on COVID-19 in certain studies. [5][6][7] In addition, it is used as the principal substance in the production of prevention and treatment drugs for some diseases. And the EP as an important indicator is used for quality evaluation of Isatidis Radix and its preparations. ...
Identification and quantification of epigoitrin (EP) in some herbs and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) preparations are critical to pharmacokinetic study and pharmaceutical quality control due to their distinct antiviral pharmacological activity. Developing an efficient, sensitive, rapid method for determination of EP is therefore essential for clinical treatment and drug development. Here, a novel molecularly imprinted electrochemical sensor for determination of EP was constructed using double-layered membranes consisting of polyaniline functionalized graphene oxide with excellent electrochemical performance and molecularly imprinted polymers on surface of electrode. The follow-up constructed polyacrylamide (PAM) films afford several specific binding cavities, endowing the exclusive recognition ability. Moreover, the PAM chain is anchored to the PANI chain by covalent bonds, and the sensitivity is further improved. Under optimized conditions, the sensor demonstrated good linearity over a wide range of 4.6×10-7 mol/L ~ 4.6×10-5 mol/L with a low detection limit of 8.21×10-8 mol/L (S/N = 3). Additionally, the sensor showed good repeatability, stability and selectivity, and can be used for the detection of EP in the extraction from Isatidis Radix with a recovery of 97.8% above. This work also provided a novel strategy for on-site, real-time and rapid detection of indicator components from TCM.
... Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus in 2019, the application of medicinal plants to strengthen immunity and prevent viral infections has increased as another option [1][2][3]. Andrographis paniculata is an indigenous medicinal plant found in Malaysia and Thailand [1,2,4,5] that has antioxidant properties to scavenge free radicals [6,7] and stimulate the immune system [8,9] against foreign matter entering the body, thereby inhibiting the growth of cancer cells [5,[10][11][12]. This plant is widely used for treating sore throats, flu and upper respiratory tract infections [5,13]. ...
A simple and reliable dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) coupled with smartphone-based digital images using crude peroxidase extracts from cassia bark (Senna siamea Lam.) was proposed to determine carbaryl residues in Andrographis paniculata herbal medicines. The method was based on the reaction of 1-naphthol (hydrolysis of carbaryl) with 4-aminoantipyrine (4-AP) in the presence of hydrogen peroxide, using peroxidase enzyme simple extracts from cassia bark as biocatalysts under pH 6.0. The red product, after preconcentration by DLLME using dichloromethane as extraction solvent, was measured for blue intensity by daily life smartphone-based digital image analysis. Under optimized conditions, good linearity of the calibration graph was found at 0.10–0.50 mg·L−1 (r2 = 0.9932). Limits of detection (LOD) (3SD/slope) and quantification (LOQ) (10SD/slope) were 0.03 and 0.09 mg·L−1, respectively, with a precision of less than 5%. Accuracy of the proposed method as percentage recovery gave satisfactory results. The proposed method was successfully applied to analyze carbaryl in Andrographis paniculata herbal medicines. Results agreed well with values obtained from the HPLC-UV method at 95% confidence level. This was simple, convenient, reliable, cost-effective and traceable as an alternative method for the determination of carbaryl.
... It is noted that the Health Ministry of Thailand approved Andrographis paniculata extract for COVID-19 treatment, which increase adapt-ability, the state of nonspecific resistance, resilience, and survival of organisms. And the combination of Andrographis paniculata with Maoto, Maotoka-senshinren, seems most promising for the treatment of viral pandemics [42]. (Figure 2) ...
The pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the SARS-coronavirus 2(SARS-CoV-2) virus has become the greatest global public health crisis in recent years,and the COVID-19 epidemic is still continuing. However, due to the lack of effectivetherapeutic drugs, the treatment of corona viruses is facing huge challenges. In thiscontext, countries with a tradition of using herbal medicine such as China have beenwidely using herbal medicine for prevention and nonspecific treatment of corona virusesand achieved good responses. In this review, we will introduce the application of herbalmedicine in the treatment of corona virus patients in China and other countries, andreview the progress of related molecular mechanisms and antiviral activity ingredients ofherbal medicine, in order to provide a reference for herbal medicine in the treatment ofcorona viruses. We found that herbal medicines are used in the prevention and fightagainst COVID-19 in countries on all continents. In China, herbal medicine has beenreported to relieve some of the clinical symptoms of mild patients and shorten the length of hospital stay. However, as most herbal medicines for the clinical treatment of COVID-19still lack rigorous clinical trials, the clinical and economic value of herbal medicines in theprevention and treatment of COVID-19 has not been fully evaluated. Future work basedon large-scale randomized, double-blind clinical trials to evaluate herbal medicines andtheir active ingredients in the treatment of new COVID-19 will be very meaningful.
