ABSTRACT
In recent years, traditional medicine has received increasing attention from the scienti‹c community as an alternative for the development of novel therapeutic approaches. The plants could offer a rich reserve for drug discovery against infectious diseases, particularly when the human population is challenged by new emerging infectious diseases (Mukhtar et al., 2008), the appearance of viral resistance against most of the available drugs, together with their side effects, as well as the ability of some viruses to develop latent or recurrent infections. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop new antivirals of a natural origin.
