The Evaluation of alternative and herbal medicine in the era of COVID-19: Future vision and challenges in a modern world

Herbal medicines are a vital source for the discovery of
new therapeutic agent for all sort of human maladies,
and when we recently hit by the most devastating pandemic
of this era, the option for alternative and herbal
medication for COVID-19 is no exception. Several forms
of complementary and alternative medicine play a part in
supportive care for patients and many COVID-19 positive
patients’ use alternative and herbal medicinal products,
food supplements, and dietary treatment and are even
promoted them as the cure for COVID-19. However, unfortunately,
none of these treatments is substantiated by
any persuasive clinical evidence. The intricate pathogenesis
of SARS-CoV-2 and multifactorial consequence of
herbal medicine and their sprightly constituent may propound
the admirable and heartening future of natural
medicine and are believed to be efficacious COVID-19
treatment. Until and unless scientifically comprehensive
evidence of the potency, safety and invulnerability
of herbal medicine in COVID-19 patients is available;
efforts should be made to abide in implementing treatment
strategies of proven effectiveness. Modern emerging
technologies in synthetic biology and genomics are
empowering new ways of exploring and taking advantage
of the medicinal properties of plants. The World Health
Organization (WHO) and Africa Centre for Disease
Control (CDC) formed a committee recently to help and
promote the African countries to conduct clinical trials
of traditional treatments in compliance with international
standard COVID-19. The richness and abundance of
alternative and herbal medication comprehend and facilitate
invaluable biomedical information, which just needed
to be unveiled through the collaboration of modern
scientific approaches with standardized clinical trials and
rigorous molecular-level investigation

Author(s): Mohd Faizan Siddiqui

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