Abstract
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is caused by an infectious novel strain of coronavirus known as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) which was earlier referred to as 2019-nCoV. The respiratory disease is the most consequential global public health crisis of the 21st century whose level of negative impact increasingly experienced globally has not been recorded since World War II. Up till now, there has been no specific globally authorized antiviral drug, vaccines, supplement or herbal remedy available for the treatment of this lethal disease except preventive measures, supportive care and non-specific treatment options adopted in different countries via divergent approaches to halt the pandemic. However, many of these interventions have been documented to show some level of success particularly the Traditional Chinese Medicine while there is paucity of well reported studies on the impact of the widely embraced Traditional African Medicines (TAM) adopted so far for the prevention, management and treatment of COVID-19. We carried out a detailed review of publicly available data, information and claims on the potentials of indigenous plants used in Sub-Saharan Africa as antiviral remedies with potentials for the prevention and management of COVID-19. In this review, we have provided a holistic report on evidence-based antiviral and promising anti-SARS-CoV-2 properties of African medicinal plants based on in silico evidence, in vitro assays and in vivo experiments alongside the available data on their mechanistic pharmacology. In addition, we have unveiled knowledge gaps, provided an update on the effort of African Scientific community toward demystifying the dreadful SARS-CoV-2 micro-enemy of man and have documented popular anti-COVID-19 herbal claims emanating from the continent for the management of COVID-19 while the risk potentials of herb-drug interaction of antiviral phytomedicines when used in combination with orthodox drugs have also been highlighted. This review exercise may lend enough credence to the potential value of African medicinal plants as possible leads in anti-COVID-19 drug discovery through research and development.
Highlights
The current pandemic threatening the global community, a highly communicable viral infection otherwise known as Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), is caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus two or severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV-2 (Figures 1, 2) (Chan et al, 2020a)
While most of the affected countries in Europe and America are relying solely on orthodox drugs, SouthEast Asia and in particular, China where the COVID-19 pandemic appear to have originated, has adequate documentation of successful outcomes following the integration of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) with orthodox medicines in COVID19 management (Chang et al, 2020; Gao et al, 2020)
Overwhelming literature evidence suggests that China and neighboring Asian territories practice a robust age-long traditional medicine system that has been favorably integrated with the western medicine; the TCM-western system of healthcare was adopted to combat the earlier outbreak of SARS-CoV in Guangdong, China in 2002 leading to the reported defeat of the epidemic (Leung, 2007)
Summary
The current pandemic threatening the global community, a highly communicable viral infection otherwise known as Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), is caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus two or SARS-CoV-2 (Figures 1, 2) (Chan et al, 2020a). Following the reported success with the use of herbal adjuvants during the previous outbreaks of viral infections in China, the outbreak of SARS-CoV2 received an immediate authorization of integral Traditional Chinese–Western medicines to treat COVID19 (Gao et al, 2020). This means Traditional Chinese Medicine TCMs (mainly plant-based) were co-administered with western drugs as adjuvants. We document the pharmacokinetic considerations in developing potential anti-COVID19 herbal products
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