Echinacea as a Potential Force against Coronavirus Infections? A Mini-Review of Randomized Controlled Trials in Adults and Children
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
Echinacea purpurea has been shown to broadly inhibit coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2 in vitro. This review discusses the available clinical evidence from randomized, blinded and controlled human studies. Two RCTs capturing incidence of viral respiratory tract infections during Echinacea preventative treatment were identified including coronavirus infections. Incidence and/or viral loads were measured by RT-PCR and symptom severity was recorded. In a first study, Jawad et al. collected nasopharyngeal swabs from adults (N = 755) over 4 months of continuous prevention. Overall, 24 and 47 enveloped virus infections occurred, including 21 and 33 coronavirus detections (229E; HKU1; OC43) with Echinaforce® extract (2400 mg daily) and placebo, respectively (p = 0.0114). In a separate study, Ogal et al. administered the same extract (1200 mg) or control for 4 months to children (4–12 years) (N = 203). Echinacea reduced the incidence of enveloped virus infections from 47 to 29 (p = 0.0038) whereas 11 and 13 coronavirus detections (229E, OC43, NL63) were counted (p > 0.05). Respiratory symptoms during coronavirus infections were significantly lower with area-under-curve AUC = 75.8 (+/−50.24) versus 27.1 (+/−21.27) score points (p = 0.0036). Importantly, viral loads in nasal secretions were significantly reduced by 98.5% in the Echinacea group, with Ct-values 31.1 [95% CI 26.3; 35.9] versus 25.0 [95% CI 20.5; 29.5] in the control group (p = 0.0479). Results from clinical studies confirm the antiviral activity found for Echinacea in vitro, embracing enveloped respiratory pathogens and therefore coronaviruses as well. Substantiating results from a new, completed study seem to extrapolate these effects to the prevention of SARS-CoV-2 infections. As hypothesized, the established broad antiviral activity of Echinacea extract appears to be inclusive for SARS-CoV-2.
Article activity feed
-
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.12.23.21267893: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Not Applicable Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Despite limitations associated with this review (e.g. low number of studies) we believe that our findings are highly relevant as they provide a rather consistent picture on antiviral and preventive benefits of Echinacea in coronavirus infections overall. Also, they provide important implications for the preventive use of Echinacea during Covid-19 epidemic. The reduction of …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.12.23.21267893: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Not Applicable Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Despite limitations associated with this review (e.g. low number of studies) we believe that our findings are highly relevant as they provide a rather consistent picture on antiviral and preventive benefits of Echinacea in coronavirus infections overall. Also, they provide important implications for the preventive use of Echinacea during Covid-19 epidemic. The reduction of coronavirus loads is medicinally highly relevant in whereas virus concentrations appear to correlate with community transmission, influence illness severity and progression in adults and children [41–44]. Two clinical studies have shown over 98.5% reduction of coronavirus concentration in nasal secretions obtained from children and adults treated with Echinacea. Evidence is still missing that vaccines significantly reduce viral loads, especially of SARS-CoV-2 delta variant and this asset would be a decisive argument for use of Echinacea during Covid-19 pandemic. Notably, all cited studies applied the same Echinacea purpurea extract (Echinaforce®) either as diluted tincture or as tablets, both of which were kept in mouth for a while prior to swallowing. As already hypothesized by Signer et al., pharyngeal administration of the extract may be key to inactivate respiratory viruses at the main entry site prior to infection [19]. Further could any viral attenuation in this region prevent further dissemination of nasal infections to the lungs, as seen with severe progressions of Covid-19. Indeed, a recent meta-an...
Results from TrialIdentifier: We found the following clinical trial numbers in your paper:
Identifier Status Title NCT05002179 Completed Echinaforce Study to Investigate Explorative Pharmacology an… Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a protocol registration statement.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
-
