Combined herbal preparation for topical treatment of Herpes labialis

The efficacy of many preparations for topical use in herpes infections have remained rather disappointing. The development of new antiviral drugs, especially herbal preparations, thus remains desirable. In a screening study with plant extracts, a rhubarb root extract and a sage extract showed a promising activity.

The efficacy of a combined topical preparation with rhubarb and sage extracts, of a single-agent preparation with sage extract and of a reference treatment was investigated in a double-blind, comparative, randomised trial.

A total of 149 patients participated, and 145 patients (111 female, 34 male) of whom 64 received the rhubarb-sage cream, 40 the sage cream and 41 Zovirax cream could be evaluated by intention-to-treat analysis. The dried rhubarb extract (23 mg/g) is a standardised aqueous- ethanolic extract according to the German Pharmacopoeia (DAB) with 4.0-6.0% hydroxyanthracene derivatives. The dried sage extract (23 mg/g) is an aqueous extract. The reference product was Zovirax cream (Zovirax(R) Creme) with the active ingredient aciclovir (50 mg/g).

The mean time to healing in all cured patients was 7.6 days with the sage cream, 6.7 days with the rhubarb-sage cream and 6.5 days with Zovirax cream. There were statistically significant differences in the course of the symptoms. For the parameter 'swelling', at the 1st followup visit there was a significant advantage for Zovirax cream compared to sage cream, and for the parameter 'pain', at the 2nd follow-up visit there was a significant difference in favour of the rhubarb-sage cream compared to the sage cream.

The combined topical sage-rhubarb preparation proved to be as effective as topical aciclovir cream and tended to be more active than the sage cream.