Valeriana is a well-known Indian traditional medicinal herb with sleep remedy. It has been used over the years to treat nervine and sedative in hysteria, epilepsy, and sedative in nervous anxiety. It has also been used as an aromatic stimulant and reported some distinctive indications, as well as its use for rheumatism, low-grade fevers, and aphrodisiac. It has been known to grow well in regions of Europe, parts of Asia and North America. This systematic review focuses on the ethnopharmacological uses of Valeriana, including recent advances on the phytochemical and pharmacological study of Valeriana officinalis. In addition, future developments and scenarios in the study of the plant have been proposed. Various literature and electronic databases such as PubMed, ScienceDirect, Springer, and Wiley were searched and data obtained. Other online academic libraries such as Google Scholar and ethnopharmacological literature were searched systematically for more information on the plant. In this paper, we have reviewed various research conducted on V. officinalis especially in areas of its ethnopharmacological use, phytochemicals, and pharmacology. This plant has been used medicinally for a minimum of 2000 years. It is used in the treatment of brain disorder and also used for the treatment of varied nervous disorders, antispasmodic, anthelmintic, diuretic, diaphoretic, and emmenagogue, and hysteria. More research is needed in the area of pharmacokinetics and toxicology to give further information on the clinical use and control the quality of the plant.

The species of Cleome genus are taxonomically included in the family of Cleomaceae and in the order of Brassicales, representing flowering plants with a long history of use in traditional medicine. Phytochemical screening experiments revealed that Cleome species contain a wide range of beneficial bioactive compounds, including alkaloids, essential oils, fatty acids, flavonoids, terpenes, sterols, and anthocyanins, indicating a therapeutic potential. Furthermore, due to the presence of these phytocompounds, there are various plant species in this genus that have demonstrated a wide range of genotypic, chemo typic, and biological activity in several ecological settings around the world. The potential biological actions and pharmacological effects, such as analgesic, anti-inflammatory, antipyretic, anti-diabetic, antidepressant, antibacterial, anti-arthritic, anticancer, and hepatoprotective are closely related to the active substances contained in various parts of the plants. By centralizing medical data provided by the scientific literature, we offer in the present work a comprehensive perspective on a wide range of bioactive compounds identified from diverse Cleome species, emphasizing the correlation of natural active substances with potential pharmacological activities that can contribute to the improvement of therapeutic management for a range of pathologies. In addition, this review suggests future research perspectives to improve the use of phytochemicals contained in the species of Cleome genus, both in terms of increasing therapeutic efficacy and safety profiles, but also in terms of identifying a possible new pharmacological effect.

A novel coronavirus (COVID-19) was identified as one of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronaviruses (SARS-CoV-2) and emerged as a pandemic in 2020. Thus, there is an urgent need to screen and develop an agent to suppress the proliferation of viral particles of SARS-CoV-2, and several drugs have entered clinical trial phases to assess their therapeutic potential. The objective of the present study is to screen phytochemicals against the main viral protease using molecular docking studies. The phytochemicals vasicine, vasicinone, vasicinolone, vasicol, vasicolinone, adhatodine, adhavasicinone, aniflorine, anisotine, vasnetine, and orientin from Adhatoda vasica were selected, and the compounds were docked with various viral protein targets, including specific SARS-CoV-2 main protease (PDBID:6Y84), using AutoDock, Schrodinger, Biovia discovery studio, and virtual screening tools. Adhatodine and vasnetine showed a better binding affinity of −9.60 KJ/mol and −8.78 KJ/mol, respectively. In molecular docking simulations for 10 ns, these compounds illustrated strong hydrogen-bonding interactions with the protein active site and induced a potential conformational change in the ligand-binding site. The results were compared with the antiviral drugs nirmatrelvir and ritonavir. These results suggest that these phytochemicals can be studied as potential inhibitors against SARS-CoV-2 protease and may have an antiviral effect on coronavirus. However, further in vitro and in vivo efficacy activity needs to be investigated for these phytochemicals.