Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2023 Jan 31;13(2):386.
doi: 10.3390/life13020386.

Plant Extracts and SARS-CoV-2: Research and Applications

Sandrina A Heleno  1 , Marcio Carocho  1 , Filipa S Reis  1 , Tânia C S P Pires  1 , Manuela Pintado  2 , Isabel C F R Ferreira  1 , Lillian Barros  1
Affiliations
Review

Plant Extracts and SARS-CoV-2: Research and Applications

Sandrina A Heleno et al. Life (Basel). .

Abstract

The recent pandemic of COVID-19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus has brought upon the world an unprecedented challenge. During its acute dissemination, a rush for vaccines started, making the scientific community come together and contribute to the development of efficient therapeutic agents and vaccines. Natural products have been used as sources of individual molecules and extracts capable of inhibiting/neutralizing several microorganisms, including viruses. Natural extracts have shown effective results against the coronavirus family, when first tested in the outbreak of SARS-CoV-1, back in 2002. In this review, the relationship between natural extracts and SARS-CoV is discussed, while also providing insight into misinformation regarding the use of plants as possible therapeutic agents. Studies with plant extracts on coronaviruses are presented, as well as the main inhibition assays and trends for the future regarding the yet unknown long-lasting effects post-infection with SARS-CoV-2.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; anti-viral agents; pandemic; secondary metabolism.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Detail of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and different aspects of its morphology.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Depiction of the conformation change in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 to bind to the cell ACE2 receptors.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Plot from VOSviewer showing the bibliographic data from specific keywords between 2020 and 2022, totaling 1504 documents grouped by co-occurrence.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Detail of relationships between plant secondary metabolites and the searched keywords.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Adedeji A.O., Severson W., Jonsson C., Singh K., Weiss S.R., Sarafianos S.G. Novel inhibitors of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus entry that act by three distinct mechanisms. J. Virol. 2013;87:8017–8028. doi: 10.1128/JVI.00998-13. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Al-Sanea M.M., Abelyan N., Abdelgawad M.A., Musa A., Ghoneim M.M., Al-Warhi T., Aljaeed N., Alotaibi O.J., Alnusaire T.S., Abdelwahab S.F., et al. Strawberry and ginger silver nanoparticles as potential inhibitors for SARS-CoV-2 sssisted by in silico modeling and metabolic profiling. Antibiotics. 2021;10:824. doi: 10.3390/antibiotics10070824. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Artika I.M., Dewantari A.K., Wiyatno A. Molecular biology of coronaviruses: Current knowledge. Heliyon. 2020;6:e04743. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e04743. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Berger A., Drosten C., Doerr H., Stürmer M., Preiser W. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-paradigm of an emerging viral infection. J. Clin. Virol. 2004;29:13–22. doi: 10.1016/j.jcv.2003.09.011. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Raj V.S., Osterhaus A.D., Fouchier R.A., Haagmans B.L. MERS: Emergence of a novel human coronavirus. Curr. Opin. Virol. 2014;5:58–62. doi: 10.1016/j.coviro.2014.01.010. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources