The vaccine when available would be stockpiled along with antiviral drugs for use to handle crisis emerging. However, immediately after the launch it would be in short supply and ineffective, in a pandemic situation, for treating the masses in developing and underdeveloped nations. Besides the WZ8040 development of drug resistance, emergence of mutant strains of the virus, emergence of a more virulent strain, prohibitive costs of available drugs, time lag between vaccine development, and mass casualties would pose really difficult problems. In view of this, complementary and alternative medicine offers a plethora of interesting possibilities to help patients. Herbs exhibit a diverse array of biological activities and can be effectively harnessed for managing pandemic flu. It is evident that nutritional and botanical approaches, taken together, provide very potent tools for controlling an array of viral infections.
It is unfortunate that many of these herbs have been overlooked, and the initial exciting research findings have not been followed up with larger, more rigorous clinical trials. The availability of a wide range of potentially GSK1904529A active herbs and constituents, to potentiate as anti influenza agents, may have a leading role in the ongoing struggle against the novel H1N1 infection. Herbal drugs would be useful, but it should not be expected as a panacea for offering perfect protection or absolute cessation of symptoms, but could be instead helpful in achieving reduced risk, symptom reduction, and quicker recovery. This paper portrays an eclectic overview for the treatment of pandemic influenza and covers some of the herbs that are most likely to be of deal help in managing the current pandemic scenario and also to cope with the next pandemic that might appear in the not too distant future.
It is our firm belief that the plants discussed in the paper would also be useful in treating the patients with serious influenza in nonpandemic situations too. Fossil records date human use of plants as medicines at least to the Middle Paleolithic age some 60,000 years ago. From that point the development of traditional medical systems incorporating plants as a means of therapy can be traced back only as far as recorded documents of their likeness. However, the value of these systems is much more than a significant anthropologic or archeologic fact. Their value is as a methodology of medicinal agents, which, according to the World Health Organization, almost 65% of the world,s population have incorporated into their primary modality of health care.
The goals of using plants as sources of therapeutic agents are a to isolate bioactive compounds for direct use as drugs, e.g, digoxin, digitoxin, morphine, reserpine, taxol, vinblastine, vincristine, b to produce bioactive compounds of novel or known structures as lead compounds for semisynthesis to produce patentable entities of higher activity and/or lower toxicity, e.g, metformin, nabilone, oxycodon, taxotere, teniposide, verapamil, and amiodarone, which are based, respectively, on galegine, ?9 tetrahydrocannabinol, morphine, taxol, podophyllotoxin, khellin, and khellin, c to use agents as pharmacologic tools, e.g, lysergic acid diethylamide, mescaline, yohimbine, and d to use the whole plant or part of it as a herbal remedy, e.g, cranberry, echinacea, feverfew, garlic, ginkgo biloba, St. John,s wort, saw palmetto.