5.3.6 Herbal medications
Based on data mining, the Traditional Chinese Medicine was also regarded as an alternative method for the treatment of COVID-19 disease in high-risk populations. During the COVID-19 outbreak in China, Chinese herbal drugs such as Astragali Radix, Glycyrrhizae Radix Et Rhizoma, Atractylodis Macrocephalae Rhizoma, Saposhnikoviae Radix, Lonicerae Japonicae Flos and Fructus forsythia were commonly harnessed for improving the treatment effect of COVID-19 infections. Herbal medications can offer a more effective and personalized treatment by adjusting the specific medicine for each patient based on the disparate syndromes (DU et al., 2020). Previous studies also indicated that the patients with SARS-CoV infection have benefited from TCM treatment (Liu et al., 2012), involving amelioration of adverse effects of tranditional therapeutics. Some TCM such as Lianhuaqingwen capsules exert anti-viral replication and anti-inflammatory activity against SARS-CoV-2 in vitro (Runfeng et al., 2020). However, the experimental study on the efficacy of herbal medicines lags behind the clinical application of traditional Chinese medicine in the COVID-19 treatment (Yang et al., 2020b). Hence, rigorous clinical trials on large populations should be carried out to identify the potential therapeutic efficacy of herbal medications.