Background: The global outbreak of COVID-19, for which there are so far few effective vaccines or evidence-based treatments, has raised much concern among people around the world, leading to numerous attempts to go for alternatives, including hand washing, hand sanitizing, wearing face masks and social distancing strategies. Several dietary nutraceuticals and plant-based compounds derived from herbal extracts may be used to treat COVID-19. Additionally, natural products have been shown to improve the immune response.
Methods: This meta-analysis aimed to determine the most common herbs and nutritional supplements that were used as a treatment, prevention or both against COVID-19 in Saudi Arabia in 2020, a preliminary search on the PubMed, EBSCO, Science Direct, Web of Science and Google Scholar databases yielded 30 papers published in English between 2020 and 2022. Five studies were systematically reviewed and included in the final meta-analysis.
Results: The observed log odds ratios ranged from -1.1135 to -0.0852, with the majority of estimates being negative (100%). According to the Cook's distances, one study could be considered to be overly influential.
Conclusion: The most effective herb in most of studies was black seed mostly with 63%, which indicated positive effect on health during COVID-19 infection besides honey which is considered as natural supplement with 83.8% as most of the participants used it against COVID-19.
Published Date: 2023-10-16; Received Date: 2023-08-04
