Moumita Saha, Isha Roychowdhuri, Chandreyi Ghosh, Sohini Kulavi, Amrita Chakraborty, Anirban Roy and Sirshendu Chatterje

In nature, there are plenty of medicinal herbs and plants which contain active compounds decisive for their diverse prophylactic/ therapeutic behaviour against many human diseases. A thorough analysis of these phyto-compounds for antimicrobial activities has considered greater importance in the context of recent days. There is an urgent need for alternative medicine to control the current pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 and its different variants, including delta strain and Omicron. Extensive research has revealed that identification and establishment of anti-viral activities of various prospective medicinal plants were limited due to: (a) infectious nature of viruses (b) absence of uncoupling techniques for the invention of anti-viral components from plants. With time progression of vector-based attempts, during which non-infectious molecular replica of an epidemic might be utilised for beneficial screening purposes alongside the development of separation techniques, offers the prospect for medicinal plants usage in current drug for the betterment of the society generally. The anti-viral mechanism of those agents could also be elucidated based on their scavenging abilities, inhibiting viral DNA replication, antioxidant activities, RNA synthesis, inhibition of the viral invasion, or inhibiting the viral propagation. A sizable amount of testing substances like phytochemicals and their synthetic residues are identified by consolidating in vitro and in vivo studies in various biological assays. In this review, comprehensive information on the recent advancement of plant-derived divergent phytochemicals as a probable non-conventional anti-viral substitute has been well explained.

DOI: 10.22271/phyto.2021.v10.i6e.14314

Pages: 372-378  |  596 Views  165 Downloads