Efficacy of Persian medicine herbal formulations (capsules and decoction) compared to standard care in patients with COVID‐19, a multicenter open‐labeled, randomized, controlled clinical trial

Abstract

Persian medicine has recommended clinical experiences and proper herbal remedies for prevention and treatment of microbial infections and respiratory diseases. An open-label, randomized, controlled, multicenter trial was conducted at five hospitals in Tehran and Isfahan provinces of Iran on 358 hospitalized adult patients. A total of 174 patients received standard care and 184 received herbal remedies (polyherbal decoction every 8 hr and two herbal capsules every 12 hr) plus standard care for 7 days. The primary clinical endpoint was the duration of hospital stay, and secondary outcomes were clinical improvement of symptoms based on self-assessment questionnaire. Results demonstrated that these natural decoction and capsules treatment plus routine care significantly decreased duration of hospital dyspnea (3.291 day vs. 6.468 days), accelerated clinical improvement, and decreased symptoms such as dry cough, dyspnea, muscle pain, headache, fatigue, anorexia, chills, runny nose, sputum cough, and vertigo in the treatment group compared with standard-care group.Significant effects of these polyherbal formulations on improving the symptoms of COVID-19 could be incredibly promising for managing this pandemic with acceptable tolerability.

Traditional Vietnamese medicine Kovir capsule in patients with mild COVID‐19: A double‐blind randomized controlled trial

“…Several herbal/traditional medicines have been investigated for the treatment of mild and severe/critical COVID-19. They come from countries with well-known traditional medicine such as China (Xia et al, 2021;Xiao et al, 2020;Xu et al, 2021;Zhou et al, 2021), India (Devpura et al, 2021;Natarajan et al, 2021;Srivastava et al, 2021), and Iran (Karimi et al, 2021;Valizadeh et al, 2020). These studies showed that herbal medicines could Antitussive treatment 0 (0.0) 4 (12.5) .050…”

“…Several herbal/traditional medicines have been investigated for the treatment of mild and severe/critical COVID‐19. They come from countries with well‐known traditional medicine such as China (Xia et al, 2021 ; Xiao et al, 2020 ; Xu et al, 2021 ; Zhang et al, 2021 ; Zhou et al, 2021 ), India (Devpura et al, 2021 ; Natarajan et al, 2021 ; Srivastava et al, 2021 ), and Iran (Karimi et al, 2021 ; Valizadeh et al, 2020 ). These studies showed that herbal medicines could reduce SARS‐CoV‐2 viral load, hospital length of stay, time to symptom resolution in mild COVID‐19 patients, and mortality rate in patients with severe/critical COVID‐19, when compared with placebo.…”

Effect of a diet based on Iranian traditional medicine on inflammatory markers and clinical outcomes in COVID-19 patients: A double-blind, randomized, controlled trial

“…The improvement of the clinical symptoms was also mentioned in another RCT that investigated the effect of Persian medicine herbal formulations on patients with COVID-19 [17] . Patients in the mentioned study also reported significant improvement in fatigue, cough, myalgia, headache as well as fever, GI symptoms, vertigo, and chest pain as well as significantly shortened average length of hospital stay.…”

Phytocompounds and COVID‐19: Two years of knowledge

“…Traditional Persian medicine (TPM) has recommended potential functional foods candidates to manage COVID‐19. A clinical study demonstrated that Persian medicine herbal formulations (capsules and decoction) plus routine care significantly decreased duration of hospitalization, accelerated clinical improvement and decreased symptoms in the treatment group compared with standard‐care group (Karimi et al, 2021 ).…”