Abstract
Objective: Viruses are agents that can infect all kinds of living organisms, and the most important hosts are humans, animals, plants, bacteria and fungi. Viral diseases are responsible for serious morbidity and mortality worldwide, are a major threat to public health, and remain a major problem worldwide. The recently prominent Coronaviruses (CoVs) within this group belong to the Coronaviridae family, subfamily Coronavirinae, and are large (genome size 26−32 kb), enveloped, single-stranded ribonucleic acid (RNA ) viruses that can infect both animals and humans. The world has experienced three epidemics caused by betaCoVs in the last two decades: SARS in 2002−03, MERS in 2012, and COVID-19, first identified in 2019. COVID-19 continues to be our current health problem and studies on the subject continue.
Result and Discussion: The term "antiviral agents" is defined in very broad terms as substances other than virus-containing vaccine or specific antibody that can produce a protective or therapeutic effect for the clearly detectable effect of the infected host.
Nature has the potential to cure humanity's helplessness against viruses with many different plant species with strong antiviral effects. During the screening of plants with antiviral effects, focusing on plants used in folk medicine is of great importance in terms of maximizing the benefit to humanity - saving time and effort by dealing with valuable ancient knowledge on a scientific basis.
In this review, viral diseases and the plants used in these diseases and determined to be effective are mentioned.