Graphical abstract Highlights • COVID-19 has led to serious death and lacks treatment strategies. • Lianhua Qingwen is a commonly used Chinese patent medicine to treat viral infection. • Lianhua Qingwen has antiviral, anti-inflammatory and immunoregulatory activities. • Lianhua Qingwen combined with conventional treatment obviously improved COVID-19. • Lianhua Qingwen can be a complementary strategy for treating COVID-19. Background An outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) which was infected by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is still spreading and has led to unprecedented health emergency over the world. Though no specific drug has been developed so far, emerging agents have been confirmed effective or potentially beneficial to restrain it. Lianhua Qingwen (LHQW) is a commonly used Chinese medical preparation to treat viral influenza, including in the fight against SARS in 2002–2003 in China. Recent data also showed that LHQW played a vigorous role in COVID-19 treatment. Purpose This review will elucidate the pre-clinical and clinical evidence of LHQW in lung protection and antiviral activities, and provide timely data delivery for the exploration of effective treatment strategies in the therapy of COVID-19. Study design and method The research data were obtained from the academic databases (up to August 8, 2020) including Pubmed, CNKI and Web of Science, on ethnobotany and ethno medicines. The search keywords for screening the literature information were “virus”, “COVID-19”, or “SARS-CoV-2”, and “Lianhua Qingwen”. The documents were filtered and summarized for final evaluation. Results The collected evidence demonstrated that LHQW exhibited benefits against COVID-19. Impressively, LHQW in conjunction with conventional treatment could significantly improve COVID-19 patients as a synergetic strategy. The mechanisms were mainly involved the antiviral activity, and regulation of inflammation response as well as immune function. Conclusion Although the data were far from adequate, the latest advances had shown the benefits of LHQW in COVID-19, especially in combination with other antiviral drugs. This review provides comprehensive evidence of LHQW as a complementary strategy for treating COVID-19. Nevertheless, imperious researches should be conducted to clarify the unconfirmed effects, regulatory mechanisms and adverse reactions of LHQW in treating COVID-19 by means of well designed randomized controlled trials.
【저자키워드】 SARS-CoV-2, coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, antiviral activity, lianhua qingwen, ACE2, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, COPD, Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, IFN, interferon, IL, interleukin, MCP, monocyte chemoattractant protein, MIP, macrophage inflammatory protein, SARS, Severe acute respiratory syndrome, COVID-19, coronavirus disease 19, ALI, Acute Lung Injury, LPS, lipopolysaccharide, TCM, traditional Chinese medicine, ADRs, adverse drug reactions, AECOPD, acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, AGE, advanced glycation end products, EC50, median effective concentrations, HPLC, high performance liquid chromatography, IBV, influenza B virus, LHQW, Lianhua Qingwen, IP, interferon-inducible protein, NF-κB, nuclear factor-kappa B, RAGE, receptor of advanced glycation end products, UPLC-DAD-QTOF-MS, ultraperformance liquid chromatography coupled with diode-array detector and quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry, Complementary strategy,