Oleandrin is a deadly plant poison, not a COVID-19 cure

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The oleander plant is beautiful but deadly because of a toxic chemical called oleadrin.
Alvesgaspar/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Cassandra Quave, Emory University

With COVID-19 cases and deaths rising in the U.S. and globally, identifying new therapies to prevent and combat the virus is a top priority. Natural products from plants are an attractive option in the search for a cure. Approximately 374,000 plant species are on Earth; humans have used more than 28,000 of them as a form of medicine.

But not all that is natural is necessarily safe. Scientists have not yet explored most of these species for their chemical makeup or therapeutic potential.

As a medical ethnobotanist, I study the traditional uses of medicinal plants to discover promising leads for new drugs to fight infectious diseases. Itโ€™s vital to consider both the potential benefits and risks of plant extracts in such research. I am concerned by recent reports that a chemical found in the oleander plant is being touted as a potential treatment for COVID-19.

About the Oleander plant

Nerium oleander is a highly toxic plant from the Apocynaceae family. Though renowned for its beauty and use in landscaping, this Mediterranean shrub is responsible for cases of accidental poisoning across the globe. All parts of the plant are poisonous. If eaten, it causes cardiac arrhythmias, or irregular heart rates, and can be lethal to both humans and animals.

A drawing of the chemical structure of oleandrin.
The chemical structure for oleandrin, the toxic compound in the beautiful plant oleander.
Casssandra Quave, Post Views: 90
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