Toxicity of herbal medications suggested as treatment for COVID-19: A narrative review

The use of Ephedra herbs in the treatment of COVID-19

Objective

Ephedra herbs are the only extant genus in its family, Ephedraceae, and order, Ephedrales. It has been prescribed in traditional medicine for improving headaches and respiratory infections. On the other hand, because the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) causes respiratory problems and COVID-19 pandemic is the most widespread outbreak that has affected humanity in the last century, the current review aims using literature search to investigate the effects of the Ephedra herbs compounds on COVID-19 to supply a reference for its clinical application in the inhibition and remedy of COVID-19.

Materials and Methods

This review was performed using articles published in various databases, including Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar, without a time limit. For this paper, the following keywords were used: "Ephedra", "coronavirus disease 2019", "COVID-19", "Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2" or "SARS CoV 2".

Results

The results of this review show that the Ephedra herbs have effectiveness on COVID-19 and its compounds can bind to angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) with a high affinity and act as a blocker and prevent the binding of the virus.

Conclusion

Some plants used in traditional medicine, including the Ephedra herbs, with their active compounds, can be considered a candidate with high potential for the control and prevention of COVID-19.

An approach to rapid distributed manufacturing of broad spectrum anti-viral griffithsin using cell-free systems to mitigate pandemics

This study describes the cell-free biomanufacturing of a broad-spectrum antiviral protein, griffithsin (GRFT) such that it can be produced with consistent purity and potency in less than 24 hours. We demonstrate GRFT production using two independent cell-free systems, one plant and one microbial. Griffithsin purity and quality were verified using standard regulatory metrics. Efficacy was demonstrated in vitro against SARS-CoV-2 and HIV-1 and was nearly identical to that of GRFT expressed in vivo . The proposed production process is efficient and can be readily scaled up and deployed anywhere in the world where a viral pathogen might emerge. The current emergence of viral variants has resulted in frequent updating of existing vaccines and loss of efficacy for front-line monoclonal antibody therapies. Proteins such as GRFT with its efficacious and broad virus neutralizing capability provide a compelling pandemic mitigation strategy to promptly suppress viral emergence at the source of an outbreak.