The outbreak of COVID-19 disease has led to a search for effective vaccines or drugs. However, insufficient vaccine supplies to meet global demand and no effective approved prescribed drugs for COVID-19 have led some people to consider the use of alternative or complementary medicines, such as traditional herbal medicine. Medicinal plants have various therapeutic properties that depend on the active compounds they contain. Obviously, herbal medicine has had an essential role in treatment and prevention during COVID-19 outbreak, especially in Asian cultures. Hence, we reviewed the uses of herbal medicine in Asian cultures and described the prominent families and species that are sources of antiviral agents against COVID-19 on the basis of case reports, community surveys, and guidelines available in the literature databases. Antiviral efficacy as determined in laboratory testing was assessed, and several promising active compounds with their molecular targets in cell models against SARS-CoV-2 viral infection will be discussed. Our review findings revealed the highly frequent use of Lamiaceae family members, Zingiber officinale, and Glycyrrhiza spp. as medicinal sources for treatment of COVID-19. In addition, several plant bioactive compounds derived from traditional herbal medicine, including andrographolide, panduratin A, baicalein, digoxin, and digitoxin, have shown potent SARS-CoV-2 antiviral activity as compared with some repurposed FDA-approved drugs. These commonly used plants and promising compounds are recommended for further exploration of their safety and efficacy against COVID-19.

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Emergence of artemisinin resistance leads the people to discover the new candidate for antimalarial drug. Combinatorial phylogeny and ethnobotanical approach may be useful to minimize the expenditure and time in laboratory testing. Seven hundred and thirty-three ethnomedicinal plants were listed from literature search. Obtained 340 internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequences of plant list which met criteria were retrieved from GenBank NCBI and analyzed by MUSCLE and maximum likelihood phylogenetic test to generate the phylogenetic tree. Interactive phylogenetic tree was generated by Interactive Tree of Life (ITOL, https://itol.embl.de) and showed strong clustered pattern on Asteraceae. Afterward, 16 species of Asteraceae were selected to investigate the antimalarial activity, phytochemical, and genetic diversity. The presence of phytochemical was determined by standard method. DNA fluorescence-based assay was performed to determine the antimalarial activity against 3D7 Plasmodium falciparum. IC50μg/mL was used to categorize antimalarial activity. On the other hand, ITS universal primer was used to amplify and sequence the obtained extracted DNA of tested plant by cetyltrimethylammonium bromide method. Phylogenetic analyses were performed by MAFFT and RAxML with automatic bootstrapping. ITOL and Adobe Illustrator were used to generate interactive phylogenetic tree. All species tested showed the presence of phenolics and flavonoids, whereas alkaloids and terpenoids were shown vary among tested extracts. Among 16 species tested, 1 species exhibited good-moderate (Sphaeranthus indicus, IC506.59 μg/mL), 4 weak (Artemisia chinensis, Artemisia vulgaris, Tridax procumbens, and Blumea balsamifera), and 3 very weak (Eupatorium capillifolium, Wedelia trilobata, and Vernonia cinerea). Generated phylogenetic tree by ITS data was able to separate the tested species into their tribal classification. In addition, new medicinal properties of A. chinensis were discovered. Combining phylogeny approach with ethnobotanical data is useful to narrow down the selection of antimalarial plants candidate.

Dinamika populasi nyamuk merupakan faktor penting untuk menentukan kejadian penyakit tular vektor. Penyakit tular vektor masih menjadi masalah kesehatan di Yogyakarta, namun belum ada kajian mengenai nyamuk vektor secara komprehensif. Analisis lingkungan terutama dari faktor temperatur udara dan curah hujan diperlukan dalam kajian monitoring nyamuk. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mendapatkan data primer dinamika populasi nyamuk di wilayah Kota Yogyakarta selama satu tahun (April 2015-Juli 2016). Pengumpulan sampel nyamuk dilakukan seminggu sekali dengan Biogents Sentinel trap (BG-S trap) yang dipasang di dalam rumah warga Kota Yogyakarta setiap jarak 500 m 2 . Data curah hujan dan temperatur udara diperoleh dari Badan Meteorologi Klimatologi dan Geofisika (BMKG) Yogyakarta. Analisis data menggunakan One Way-Anova SPSS 16 dan analisis regresi linear. Berdasarkan hasil pengamatan selama setahun menunjukkan bahwa populasi nyamuk didominasi oleh dua spesies, yaitu Aedes aegypti (L.) dan Culex quinquefasciatus (Say). Peningkatan populasi Ae. aegypti dan Ae. albopictus terjadi pada bulan November-Desember 2015 saat curah hujan dan temperatur tertinggi, berkebalikan dengan Cx. quiquefasciatus. Pengaruh faktor cuaca seperti temperatur serta curah hujan berkorelasi positif dengan populasi Ae. aegypti dan Ae. albopictus, namun berkorelasi negatif dengan populasi Cx. quinquefasciatus.

Ethnobotanical-directed bioprospecting has made a significant contribution to modern drug discoveries. However, merely relying on this approach may spend more expenditure, time-consuming, and lead exhaustive laboratory testing due to the tremendous data of medicinal plants used and the occurrence of placebo effect during traditional medical treatment. Combining the phylogeny approach with ethnobotanical bioprospecting may become new prospective tools to lead the plant-based drug discovery, including antimalaria. This study aimed to map the ethnomedicinal plants used by various indigenous cultures to investigate the clustered pattern of its antimalarial properties for future bioprospecting. The Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) region sequences of selected 280 medicinal plants taxa obtained from NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) were aligned by MUSCLE multiple sequences alignments. They were further analyzed using the Maximum Likelihood Phylogenetic Test by MEGA X software to construct the phylogenetic tree. Our research revealed that the medicinal plant taxa for malaria treatment was clumped in several families, including Apocynaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Rubiaceae, Rutaceae, Fabaceae were strongly clumped along with plants used for fever in the Asteraceae family. Interestingly, our finding showed that these plants were clumped in the sub-family of antimalarial producing species, the Asteroidea. Furthermore, the strongly clumping pattern was also shown in the tribe Heliantheae alliance of this sub-family. This finding supports the predictive power of phylogeny for future bioprospecting to select the candidate taxa to lead the drug discovery.