Echinacea for Prevention/Therapy of Respiratory Tract Infections during Covid-19 Pandemic: Insights from recent in vivo and in vitro Investigation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Continuous mutation of SARS-CoV-2 and novel variants of concerns (VOCs) pose a serious threat to containment by immunization. The quest for additional broad-spectrum antivirals is therefore still ongoing. Aims: A randomized, open, controlled clinical study in 120 adults investigated a freshly harvested Echinacea purpurea extract [Echinaforce ® /EF] for the prevention and treatment of respiratory tract infections (RTIs) during Covid-19 pandemic (Nov2020-May2021). At the same time, in vitro studies shed light on the modes-of-action of the observed broad antiviral effects. Results: During 5 months of prevention [2/2/1 mt], 21 and 29 nasopharyngeal/blood samples tested positive for any virus in the EF and in the non-treatment control group, of which 5 and 14 samples tested SARS-CoV-2 positive (RR = 0.37, p = 0.03). EF acute treatment significantly reduced the overall virus load in swab samples of patients by at least 2.12 log10 or approx. 99% (p < 0.05), the time to virus clearance by 8.0 days for all viruses (p = 0.02) and by 4.8 days for SARS-CoV-2 (p > 0.05) in comparison to control. Two hospitalizations occurred with control and none during EF prevention. EF broadly inhibited SARS-CoV-2 VOCs in vivo (alpha/beta/gamma/delta/eta/omicron) at physiological concentrations (EC 50 ≤ 12ug/ml) due to interaction of alkylamides with receptor binding domain (RBD) of spike protein (virucidal) as well as inhibition of TMPRSS-2 serine protease on host cell (cell-protective). Conclusion: EF extract shows broad antiviral effects in vitro and in vivo and reducing the risk of viral RTIs, including SARS-CoV-2. By substantially suppressing virus loads in infected individuals, EF offers a supportive addition to existing mandated treatments such as vaccinations. Publication History Article published online: 12 December 2022 © 2022. Thieme. All rights reserved. Georg Thieme Verlag KG Rüdigerstraße 14, 70469 Stuttgart, Germany
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".