A new European randomized, open, controlled, exploratory clinical study conducted by researchers from the Clinical Research Center DCC Convex Ltd-Bulgaria, Virtus Respiratory Research Limited-United Kingdom, Imperial College London-United Kingdom, Medistat Ltd-Bulgaria, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin-Germany, the Italian Ministry of Defence, University of Antwerp-Belgium and the University of Ljubljana-Slovenia has shown that the herb Echinacea purpurea demonstrates antiviral properties and is able to reduce the risk of viral respiratory tract infections including that by the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen which causes the COVID-19 disease.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05002179
The study findings were published on a preprint server and are currently being peer reviewed.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.10.21267582v1
In addition, the emergence of novel SARS CoV2 variants increases the threat of uncontrolled dissemination and additional antiviral therapies are urgently needed for effective containment. In previous in vitro studies Echinacea purpurea demonstrated strong antiviral activity against enveloped viruses, including SARS CoV2.
In this study, we examined the potential of Echinacea purpurea in preventing and treating respiratory tract infections (RTIs) and in particular, SARS CoV2 infections. Methods: 120 healthy volunteers (m,f, 18 to 75 years) were randomly assigned to Echinacea prevention or control group without any intervention. After a run-in week, participants went through 3 prevention cycles of 2, 2 and 1 months with daily 2400mg Echinacea purpurea extract (Echinaforce, EF).
The prevention cycles were interrupted by breaks of 1 week. Acute respiratory symptoms were treated with 4000 mg EF for up to 10 days, and their severity assessed via a diary. Naso/oropharyngeal swabs and venous blood samples were routinely collected every month and during acute illnesses for detection and identification of respiratory viruses, including SARS CoV2 via RT qPCR and serology.
EF treatment when applied during acute episodes significantly reduced the overall virus load by at least 2.12 log10 or approx. 99% (t test, p<0.05), the time to virus clearance by 8.0 days for all viruses (Wilcoxon test, p=0.02) and by 4.8 days for SARS CoV2 (p>0.05) in comparison to control.
Finally, EF treatment significantly reduced fever days (1 day vs 11 days, Chi square test, p=0.003) but not the overall symptom severity.
There were fewer COVID-19 related hospitalizations in the EF treatment group (N=0 vs N=2). Discussion/Conclusion: EF exhibited antiviral effects and reduced the risk of viral RTIs, including SARS CoV2.
By substantially reducing virus loads in infected subjects, EF offers a supportive addition to existing mandated treatments like vaccinations.
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