Potential Treatment of COVID-19 with Traditional Chinese Medicine: What Herbs Can Help Win the Battle with SARS-CoV-2?

Engineering ›› 2022, Vol. 19 ›› Issue (12) : 139 -152. DOI: 10.1016/j.eng.2021.08.020

Research

Review

Lin Li ^a^,^b^,^c^,^* ,
Yuzheng Wu ^a^,^c^,^d^,^* ,
Jiabao Wang ^a^,^b^,^c ,
Huimin Yan ^a^,^b^,^c ,
Jia Lu ^a^,^b^,^c ,
Yu Wan ^a^,^e ,
Boli Zhang ^a^,^b^,^c ,
Junhua Zhang ^a^,^c^,^f ,
Jian Yang ^a^,^b^,^c ,
Xiaoying Wang ^a^,^g ,
Min Zhang ^a^,^b^,^c ,
Yue Li ^a^,^b^,^c ,
Lin Miao ^a^,^b^,^c ,
Han Zhang ^a^,^b^,^c

Author information +

History +

Received	Accepted	Published
2021-05-06		2022-01-24
Issue Date
2024-06-13

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Abstract

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been successfully applied worldwide in the treatment of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). However, the pharmacological mechanisms underlying this success remain unclear. Hence, the aim of this review is to combine pharmacological assays based on the theory of TCM in order to elucidate the potential signaling pathways, targets, active compounds, and formulas of herbs that are involved in the TCM treatment of COVID-19, which exhibits combatting viral infections, immune regulation, and amelioration of lung injury and fibrosis. Extensive reports on target screening are elucidated using virtual prediction via docking analysis or network pharmacology based on existing data. The results of these reports indicate that an intricate regulatory mechanism is involved in the pathogenesis of COVID-19. Therefore, more pharmacological research on the natural herbs used in TCM should be conducted in order to determine the association between TCM and COVID-19 and account for the observed therapeutic effects of TCM against COVID-19.

Keywords

Traditional Chinese medicine / SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 / Antivirus / Anti-inflammation / Immune regulation

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Lin Li, Yuzheng Wu, Jiabao Wang, Huimin Yan, Jia Lu, Yu Wan, Boli Zhang, Junhua Zhang, Jian Yang, Xiaoying Wang, Min Zhang, Yue Li, Lin Miao, Han Zhang. Potential Treatment of COVID-19 with Traditional Chinese Medicine: What Herbs Can Help Win the Battle with SARS-CoV-2?. Engineering, 2022, 19(12): 139-152 DOI:10.1016/j.eng.2021.08.020