POTENTIAL TREATMENT FOR CORONAVIRUS DISEASE (COVID-19) (eBook)

Many viral infections are still causing tremendous threat to human being such as HIV, coronavirus, SARS, avian influenza, swine flu, Dengue virus, Ebola virus, etc. There are no efficient conventional medications or vaccines for most of these viruses. Consequently alternative natural medications are an urgent requirement to fill the gap of unavailability of conventional therapies or vaccines. Complementary and alternative medicine has been used for centuries in many societies to treat various illnesses, including viral infections. Herbal, dietary, complementary, and natural therapies have been used widely for prevention and treatment of viral infections (Mousa, 2015). Coronavirus disease (CoViD-19) is basically a respiratory infection caused by a group of viruses infecting respiratory pathway, lungs and it can spread from animal to person, person to person while sneezing or physical contact. Its common symptoms include cough, cold, fever and sore throat. Herbal medicine is a class of medicine originating from nature hence causing fewer side effects because of less use of additives, preservatives or excipients. The use of herbs for the treatment of Coronavirus could be used due to the rapid spread of the infection, availability of less knowledge regarding the treatment and increased concern of public to protect them from the effect of viral infection and preventing the use of allopathic medicines (Dudani & Saraogi, 2020). Corona virus is caused by rapidly dividing virus which works by injecting it's genome into other's gene and multiplies there hence it depends on other organisms for its growth and therefore makes it more difficult to vanish the disease-causing agent and it is becoming a great topic of research among the drug developers, researchers and scientists. When a patient is treated with a herbal drug, the continuous observation of treatment and its effect becomes prerequisite to alter the dose as and when required on the basis of effects observed by the herbal practitioner. There is no scientific evidence for any of these alternative remedies like TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) and herbs to prevent or cure the illness caused by this virus, in fact, some of them may cause side effects (Dudani & Saraogi, 2020). This book will discuss the topic of the possibility of using herbs and medicinal plants in order to prevent or treat people infected with the novel coronavirus (CoViD-19) by relying on a review of previous research that dealt with this or