Since ancient times, herbaceous plants have been used as natural treatments for several diseases, including viral infections.
Due to their concentration of potent plant compounds, many herbs aid in fighting viruses and are recommended by practitioners of natural medicine. I am curious to know what derived the natural selection to favour such properties?
Hi, interesting question!
Flavonoids for example has a lot of remedial properties like antioxidant, antibacterial and so on. Antioxidants help attack free radicals in the plants itself. Also, the flavonoids help attract pollinators, possibly due to the smell and colour of the fruits. It can also offer protection against herbivores and insects. Hope it helps!
The mechanism of most antiviral compounds was not the direct killing of the viruses but rather involves "inhibition" of many steps/processes pertaining their replication and survival. Many of these inhibitions require ligand-receptor interaction, with the receptors being of the virus or of the human. Biological receptors are complex and usually chiral. Natural compounds, including those from plants (phytochemicals), are known for their structural diversity, complexity and chirality, and therefore have always been a good candidate to find "lead" structures that can serve as a ligand to bind with the receptor and triggers the inhibitions which battle biological illnesses, including viral diseases in human. The "lead" structures of natural compounds are usually derived to obtain a more potent, more specific, and/or less toxic derivative that became the eventual drug.
Dear Vipin Bhardwaj
Here (doi: 10.4103/0973-7847.95849) is a review article of the oldest written evidence of medicinal plants’ usage for preparation of drugs.. very interesting
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