Khadka et al. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine (2021) 17:26 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13002-021-00449-w RESEARCH Open Access The use of medicinal plants to prevent COVID-19 in Nepal Dipak Khadka1,2,3, Man Kumar Dhamala4ˆ, Feifei Li5, Prakash Chandra Aryal2,3, Pappu Rana Magar6, Sijar Bhatta2, Manju Shree Thakur2, Anup Basnet2, Dafang Cui1* and Shi Shi1,7* Abstract Background: Medicinal plants are the fundamental unit of traditional medicine system in Nepal. Nepalese people are rich in traditional medicine especially in folk medicine (ethnomedicine), and this system is gaining much attention after 1995. The use of medicinal plants has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic as a private behavior (not under the control of government). A lot of misinterpretations of the use of medicinal plants to treat or prevent COVID-19 have been spreading throughout Nepal which need to be managed proactively. In this context, a research was needed to document medicinal plants used, their priority of use in society, their cultivation status, and the source of information people follow to use them. This study aimed to document the present status of medicinal plant use and make important suggestion to the concerned authorities. Methods: This study used a web-based survey to collect primary data related to medicinal plants used during COVID-19. A total of 774 respondents took part in the survey. The study calculated the relative frequencies of citation (RFC) for the recorded medicinal plants. The relationship between plants recorded and different covariates (age, gender education, occupation, living place, and treatment methods) was assessed using Kruskal-Wallis test and Wilcoxon test. The relationship between the information sources people follow and the respondent characteristics was assessed using chi-square test. Results: The study found that the use of medicinal plants has increased during COVID-19 and most of the respondents recommended medicinal plants to prevent COVID-19. This study recorded a total of 60 plants belonging to 36 families. The leaves of the plants were the most frequently used. The Zingiber officinale was the most cited species with the frequency of citation 0.398. Most of the people (45.61%) were getting medicinal plants from their home garden. The medicinal plants recorded were significantly associated with the education level, location of home, primary treatment mode, gender, and age class. The information source of plants was significantly associated with the education, gender, method of treatment, occupation, living with family, and location of home during the lockdown caused by COVID-19. Conclusions: People were using more medicinal plants during COVID-19 claiming that they can prevent or cure COVID-19. This should be taken seriously by concerned authorities. The authorities should test the validity of these medicinal plants and control the flow of false information spread through research and awareness programs. Keywords: Corona, COVID-19, Knowledge, Medicinal plants, Pandemic, People, Prevent * Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected] ˆMan Kumar Dhamala is deceased. We would like to dedicate this paper in the memory of Dr. Man Kumar Dhamala who died on November 5, 2020. 1Guangdong Key Laboratory for Innovative Development and Utilization of Forest Plant Germplasm, College of Forestry and Landscape Architecture, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, China Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2021 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. Khadka et al. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine (2021) 17:26 Page 2 of 17 Background and the Tibetan medicine), Folk medicine (ethnomedi- The new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has cine, community medicine, household medicine, and any caused global socioeconomic disturbances with a worri- other forms of local medicines), and Shamanistic some number of deaths and health issues, and the world (Dhami-jhankri, Jharphuke, Pundit-Lama-Pujari-Gurau, has been struggling to find medicine to treat and prevent and Jyotish). Among them, folk medicine system is using COVID-19 [1]. A number of combinations and trials more medicinal plants in Nepal [28]. The first scientific have been done, but so far, they have not produced research published in ethnobotany is dated back to 1955 promising results [2–4]. The different types of misinfor- [29]. More than 80% of the people in Nepal have been mation related to COVID-19 have been spreading using traditional medicine such as medicinal plants [30, throughout the world through social media [5], includ- 31]. Medicinal plants are the primary source of health- ing use of medicinal plant products to prevent or cure care for the people in Nepal and are an integral part of COVID-19. Due to this situation, ethnobiologists should their culture [32, 33]. Most of the people in Nepal have collaborate with local people and document the medi- been using medicinal plants as the alternative to allo- cinal plants used with caution to stop the inaccurate pathic or western medicine [34]. sharing of information [6]. It has also been playing an important role in increasing There is a strong inter-relationship between people and the economic level of people [35] as Nepal exports medi- plants according to needs [7–10]. People are dependent cinal plants to different countries in the world [36]. The on plants for different purposes such as for food, medi- elder people living in rural areas have more knowledge cine, and houses [11–13]. Plant species have always been a of traditional medicine [37]. fundamental source for the discovery of drugs [14]. People In Nepal, COVID-19 cases are increasing daily but the had used medicinal plants to fight against pandemics in health care system is fragile and has a lack of infrastructure the past [15–17], and dependency of people on medicinal [38]. In this context, home remedies, like the use of medi- plants might have increased in these days around the cinal plants supported by the relevant authorities, can serve world as medicinal plants can be an alternative option to as an alternative option to combat COVID-19. The Nepal prevent COVID-19 [18]. government has also valued medicinal plants as an immun- Different researchers have suggested herbal medicine as a ity power booster used with prescriptions [39]. But, there a potential option to cure or prevent COVID-19 [19, 20]. considerable amount of false information spread in Nepal Countries like China and India are integrating their use regarding the use of medicinal plants and people are ran- with western medicine to boost the immunity power of domly using plants which can go against the traditional COVID-19 patients [21, 22]. In China, traditional medicine methodology and make it difficult to combat COVID-19. showed encouraging results in improving symptom man- The present study has attempted to reveal the status of me- agement and reducing the deterioration, mortality, and re- dicinal plant use in Nepal during COVID-19. Specifically, currence rates [23]. On the other hand, the World Health this study is aimed to address the following objectives: (1) Organization (WHO) (2020) claims medicinal plants might document the status and source of medicinal plants used to be good for the health and in supporting the immune sys- prevent COVID-19, (2) know the relationship between the tem, but not in preventing or curing COVID-19. The number of plants reported and covariates, and (3) know the WHO Africa (2020) claims unscientific products to treat relationship between information sources respondents fol- COVID-19 can be unsafe for people, as they may abandon low and respondent characteristics. self-hygienic practices, may increase self-medication, and maybearisktopatientsafety. Methods Lifestyle, diet, age, sex, medicinal conditions, and en- Methods of data collection vironmental factors have been playing an important role A set of questionnaire forms were prepared by Google in the personal fate towards the severity of COVID-19 Form developer. The Google Form was initially tested to [24]. The source of information, such as social media, validate and understand the response rate from respon- plays an important role to combat pandemics [25, 26]. dents. We followed the code of ethics of the Inter- People receive information regarding COVID-19 and national Society of Ethnobiology [40]. We wrote a other diseases from different sources including the social consent message to all the people we reached with the