Potential Role of Medicinal Plants for the Treatment of Respiratory Viruses: A Review

Abstract

Medicinal plants have many applications due to their efficiency, have lower side effects and their content of phytochemicals compounds that are efficient in the treatment of many diseases such as viral diseases respiratory system. In the last decades, traditional medicine uses medicinal plants in the treatment of viral diseases especially in treatment of respiratory viruses, including (Human Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), Human Parainfluenza Viruses (HPIV), Human Metapneumovirus (HMPV), Rhinovirus (HRV), Respiratory Adenoviruses (HadV), Human Coronaviruses Unrelated to SARS (CoV), SARS Coronavirus (SARS-CoV), and Human Bocavirus (HBoV)). Treatment of these diseases via using efficient medicinal plants leads to prevent or decrease infections, this occurs via various mechanisms. Most of these mechanisms exert an antiviral effect through inhibiting the transcription of respiratory viruses. In this review article, we focus on the role of twenty-one medicinal plants in treatment of respiratory viruses due to importance of this subject in the last decades in treatment of various diseases. ©2021 National Information and Documentation Center (NIDOC).