Immunomodulatory Plant Extracts and their Compounds. Evaluation of your Safety

Abstract

Medicinal herbs have been in use for the management of human health, for prevention. as well as for the cure of human diseases since ancient civilizations. In recent times, the use of herbal drugs has increased in both developed and developing countries, because of the large chemical, pharmacological, and clinical knowledge of plant drugs and their derivatives, the development of new analytical methods for quality control, the development of new forms of preparation and administration of plant drugs and their derivatives and finally the relatively wide therapeutic margins with less frequent adverse effects. However, naturals are not a synonym for innocuous as many adverse effects can occur. In this regard, there are different levels of perceptions about the safety of medicinal herbs, varying from “completely safe” to “completely harmful”, although there is also a clear idea about its side effects depending on factors such as dosage, characteristics of the plant material and consumer-related factors. Because of this, medicinal plants need to be studied and effective and innocuous doses must be established. Nowadays, immunomodulatory drugs have gained a main role principally as a consequence of COVID-19 produced by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Some South American plants frequently used in Argentine folk medicine such as Larrea divaricata and Ilex paraguariensis and others used all over the world like Tilia spp. and Coffeea Arabica are known to exert immune-enhancing effects. In this review, we discussed some reports about the immunological effect of the mentioned plants and their majority compounds, focusing on their efficacy and safety.