The Anti-Viral Activity of Prunella vulgaris : A Narrative Review

Introduction: This narrative review reports on the anti-viral activity of Prunella vulgaris with the aim of providing an overview of P. vulgaris research to date. P. vulgaris is an aromatic perennial herb that is common across diverse geographic regions. This article includes information about the investigation strategies and methodologies used to identify the nature of P. vulgaris's anti-viral mechanisms. Given its diverse interest and use, the P. vulgaris literature over the previous three decades reports on the phytochemical, agricultural, and pharmacological uses of the herb. To provide some background to the review, a brief description of the life cycle of the virus is given. Materials and Methods: The review was based on a literature search with three databases: Embase, Medline, and PubMed. The review's inclusion criteria were unrestricted: The time of publication was unlimited; the keywords included ?virus,? along with HIV and HSV (given the research's historical focus), and ?prunella vulgaris? (and variations). The articles identified were then categorized. Results: The search identified 24 articles, with 10 articles on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), 8 articles on herpes simplex virus (HSV), and the remainder on other viruses. In vitro experimental designs dominated the methods, whereas in vivo parts were also noted. Most frequent P. vulgaris extraction methods included boiling for aqueous extract, followed by ethanolic extraction. Several anti-viral effective chemicals were identified across the studies, including polysaccharides, polyphenolics, triterpenes, and a range of essential oils. In this review, the articles were then categorized according to the stages of viral development and analysis methods, such as time-of-addition, pseudo-typing, and the use of reverse transcriptase, integrase, protease, and viral protein detecting kits. This categorization exposed the mechanisms behind the anti-viral effect of the herb. Discussion: Due to the diverse focuses and designs of the research projects, there are difficulties in producing a summarized and quantitative analysis of all the literature collectively. These difficulties are discussed. For future research directions, it is suggested to use modern molecular biology techniques as tools for further investigations. As the pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus is the focus of attention of the whole world now, but there has been little research r