Licorice has been a common Chinese medicine for thousands of years, which has good medicinal value and nutritional value. Is widely apply to traditional Chinese medicine. Many studies have shown that licorice contains more than 20 triterpenoids and nearly 300 flavonoids. According to the literature, licorice has many activities such as antibacterial, antiviral, antioxidant, and anticancer. It not only directly inactivates the virus, but also inhibits its adsorption. However, glycyrrhizin, glycyrrhetinic acid, glycyrrhiza polysaccharide and glycyrrhiza flavonoids are the main components of licorice which possess antiviral and antimicrobial activities. Among them, glycyrrhizin has many pharmacological activities, such as antiviral, anti-inflammatory, anti-tumor, antibacterial and many other activities. This paper provides a summary of antiviral activities of glycyrrhizin. This active ingredients and possible mechanisms are summarized in detail. The results showed that glycyrrhizin was widely used in antiviral field, but its material basis and mechanism of action were not perfect and unified. A large number of literatures about glycyrrhizin anti-virus were reviewed and analyzed, and it was suggested that more different ways should be adopted to study it, so as to provide a broader theoretical basis for developing new antivirus drugs of glycyrrhizin. It is hoped that this review will be helpful to further study the potential therapeutic effect of glycyrrhizin as an antiviral drug.
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