Article Sidebar
Published:
Jul 13, 2023DOI:
10.4314/ahs.v23i2.7Keywords:
Article Details
While African Health Sciences has been freely accessible online there have been questions on whether it is Open Access or not. We wish to clearly state that indeed African Health Sciences is Open Access. There are key issues regarding Open Access needing clarification for avoidance of doubt:
- 1. Henceforth, papers in African Health Sciences will be published under the CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution License) 4.0 International. See details on https://creativecomons.org/)
- 2. The copyright owners or the authors grant the 3rd party (perpetually and in advance) the right to disseminate, reproduce, or use the research papers in part or in full, format/medium as long as:
- No substantive errors are introduced in the process
- Attribution of authorship and correct citation details are given
- The referencing details are not changed.
Should the papers be reproduced in part, this must be clearly stated.
- 3. The papers will be freely and universally accessible online in an easily readable format such as XML in at least one widely recognized open access repository such as PUBMED CENTRAL.
B. ABRIDGED LICENCE AGREEMENT BETWEEN AUTHORS AND African Health Sciences
I submitted my manuscript to African Health Sciences and would like to affirm that:
1.0 I am authorized by my co-authors to enter into these arrangements.
2.0 I guarantee, on behalf of self and co-authors:
- That the paper is original, and has not been published in any other peer-reviewed journal; nor is it under consideration by other journal (s). It does not infringe existing copyright or any other person’s rights
- That we are/I am the sole author(s) of the paper and with authority to enter into this agreement. My granting rights to African Health Sciences is not in breach of any other obligation
- That the paper contains nothing unlawful, or libelous. Nor anything that would constitute a breach of contract, confidence or commitment given to secrecy, if published
- That I/we have taken care to ensure the integrity of the article.
3.0 I and all co-authors, agree that the paper, if accepted for publication, shall be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0. (see https://creativecommons.org/)
Main Article Content
What can traditional plant therapy do in the face of Covid-19? Examples from traditional Chinese medicine
Abstract
Background: Until June 2022, more than 540.9 million people had been diagnosed with COVID-19, and the pandemic had claimed more than six million lives worldwide. Two years after fighting the virus, we faced a more uncertain position. SARS-CoV-2 is constantly mutating and reappears regularly, particularly with Omicron variants showing high genetic variation and immune escape mechanisms. The efficacy and duration of protection of existing vaccines against new variants of SARS-CoV-2 remains uncertain. The world needs time to develop new variant-specific drugs, including monoclonal topics, vaccines, and other antiviral drugs, to fight the epidemic.
Objective: The aim of this study was to illustrate the scientific, effective and systematic nature of three classical prescriptions of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) for the treatment of COVID-19 through comparison of disease symptoms, diagnostic process, and treatment methods and evidence-based and pharmacological studies.
Methods: We analysed the “Diagnosis and Treatment Protocol for Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia” (Version 9) made by China, “WHO-2019-nCoV-therapeutics”, “Therapeutic Guidelines” published by Australian Therapeutic Guidelines Limited, “Shanghan Lun (Treatise on Febrile Diseases)”, “Jinkui Yaolue (Golden Chamber Synopsis), and “Wenyi Lun (The Epidemic Febrile Disease)”. We manually retrieved the dictionary of traditional Chinese medicine (Version II). In addition, we searched the Wiley online library, National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), VIP, WHO website, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) for relevant literature from 2001 to 2022. We searched the original plants, ingredients, pharmacology, functions and indications, usage and dosage, drug efficacy, literature sources, and conduct an evidence-based studies. We quantified the strength of pharmacological action to show the pertinence of disease development.
Results: We found that the diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary infection caused by epidemic disease in TCM classics is consistent with the diagnostic process of modern medical therapeutic guidelines. The three classic prescriptions have significant symptomatic therapeutic effects on the respiratory, gastrointestinal, urinary and hematological symptoms of the clinical manifestations of COVID-19. It was found that the herbal functional group of Houpo (Cortex Magnoliae Officinalis), Chaihu (Radix Bupleuri), Cangzhu (Rhizoma Atractylodis), Qianghuo (Notopterygii Rhizoma et Radix), etc showed strong anti-inflammatory activity and had a positive effect on treating and preventing the outbreaks of systemic inflammatory factors.
Conclusion: TCM can obtain obvious curative effect in symptomatic treatment, has strong anti-inflammatory effect, and can effectively reduce symptoms and patients' pain.
Keywords: COVID-19; traditional plant therapy; Qingfei Paidu decoction.
