Building immunity

Lucknow: If you are someone who regularly consumes turmeric, neem and tulsi in their diet, then you are not just building your immunity against diseases, but may also, to an extent, be blocking novel coronavirus from affecting your body.
The findings are from original research conducted on natural herbal products from Ayurveda undertaken by a team of scientists led by Prof Shailendra Saxena, head of the Centre for Advanced Research (CFAR) at KGMU. The vice-chancellor of KGMU Prof MLB Bhatt was also part of the team.
The study, which has been peer reviewed and published in Springer Nature journal of viral diseases, was conducted by 3D structure-based drug designing.
“Covid-19 is caused by the SARS-Cov-2 virus. In our research, we studied direct interaction between herbal products and the virus, using viral or host protein to drug. The results proved that some of these known immunity boosting products from Ayurveda, especially curcumin (haldi), nimbin (neem), ashwagandha and black pepper can restrict the virus’ attachment to the host cell receptor ACE2. This they do by inhibition of spike glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 or its cellular receptor, thus blocking entry of the virus in our body,” said lead researcher Prof Saxena.
“It is suggested that these natural products/drugs from Ayurveda may be useful as therapeutic agents during Covid-19. They can be used as integrative medicine to work with allopathic medicines patients are being put on. Healthcare workers can be given special doses of these to protect them effectively from falling prey to the virus,” he added. The study claims to be the first of its kind to prove with data that home remedies can be effective against coronavirus to a large extent.
“We know the protein structures of these herbal products and the same is known of the virus too. For the study, we interacted a library of herbal products but found that haldi and neem were blocking the virus to the protein ACE2 receptor much more effectively than hydroxychloroquine,” he said.
Prof Saxena also said that this study has been sent to World Health Organization by Springer Nature, due to its relevance to the outbreak.