Carvacrol for COVID-19

COVID-19 pandemic caused by the novel SARS-CoV-2 has impacted human livelihood globally. Strenuous efforts have been employed for its control and prevention; however, with recent reports on mutated strains with much higher infectivity, transmissibility, and ability to evade immunity developed from previous SARS-CoV-2 infections, prevention alternatives must be prepared beforehand in case. We have perused over 128 recent works (found on Google Scholar, PubMed, and ScienceDirect as of February 2023) on medicinal plants and their compounds for anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity and eventually reviewed 102 of them. The clinical application and the curative effect were reported high in China and in India. Accordingly, this review highlights the unprecedented opportunities offered by medicinal plants and their compounds, candidates as the therapeutic agent, against COVID-19 by acting as viral protein inhibitors and immunomodulator in (32 clinical trials and hundreds of in silico experiments) conjecture with modern science. Moreover, the associated foreseeable challenges for their viral outbreak management were discussed in comparison to synthetic drugs.

The COVID-19 pandemic that broken out in 2020 is becoming more worrying for the world. Although there is no 100 % success against COVID-19, certain synthetic drugs are currently used despite various side effects. Therefore, studies on the discovery of new treatment alternatives come to the fore. Studies so far show that natural products are still important resources for the discovery of new therapeutic agents. Plant-derived essential oils are complex volatiles composed of various phytochemicals, mostly containing compounds such as sesquiterpenes, monoterpenes, and phenylpropanoids. In this study, especially thymol and carvacrol compounds specific to the Lamiaceae (Labiate) family and aromatic monoterpenes derived from these compounds were modeled against COVID-19. Results were compared with remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, and favipiravir used as synthetic drugs. Dock and molecular dynamics simulations analyzed these molecules’ potential inhibitor efficiency of the SARS-CoV2 Mpro. Lipinski parameters and Docking results were demonstrated that ligands carvacrol (2), carvacryl acetate (11) and cuminaldehyde (12) are potential inhibitors towards COVID-19. According to the results, it is seen that medicinal aromatic herbs, which contain these volatile components with the fewer side effects than synthetic drugs, have the potential to be used as supplements in the pharmaceutical industry.