The Role of Nutraceuticals in the Prevention and/or Treatment of COVID-19: An Umbrella Review

Abstract

Background: To identify the results of published review literature regarding nutraceuticals, including probiotics, melatonin, poly-unsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), quercetin, N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), and propolis as they relate to the prevention and/ or treatment of COVID-19 (CV) and/or long COVID (long CV) and to outline key areas to consider for clinical application and for further research.

Methods: This paper is part of a six-part umbrella review which progresses from a living review. This review incorporates systematic reviews and narrative reviews as they relate to nutraceuticals. A live literature search occurred monthly in PubMed and Google Scholar from May 2022 to May 2023. Assessing the Methodological Quality of Systematic Reviews Version 2 (AMSTAR-2) scoring assessed systematic review quality, while the Scale for the Assessment of Narrative Review Articles (SANRA) guidelines evaluated narrative reviews. Only those studies that were relevant to the nutraceuticals outlined above and that addressed COVID-19 prevention and/or treatment of CV and/or long CV were extracted from each review.

Results: Fifteen narrative reviews and 16 systematic reviews were included in this umbrella review. Studies indicate that nutraceuticals may be beneficial in improving the rate of recovery from various COVID-19 symptoms, rate of conversion parameters such as rate or duration of hospital stay and risk of intensive care unit (ICU) admission, and an improvement in various laboratory tests.

Conclusion/Summary: The broad antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, and immune modulatory characteristics make the nutraceuticals included in this review reasonable choices for further research. Of the nutraceuticals discussed above, probiotics, melatonin, NAC, and quercetin indicate the greatest potential for benefit in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 and long CV.