Andrographis for Immune Function

Research suggests that Andrographis paniculata may support immune function and disease resistance, though the available evidence comes primarily from animal studies conducted in poultry and aquaculture settings rather than human clinical trials. Two randomized controlled trials and one additional animal study consistently found that Andrographis supplementation enhanced immune organ development, non-specific immune responses, and survival rates following bacterial challenge in ducks, broiler chickens, and shrimp, with one study noting that a fermented form of the herb outperformed the unfermented version. A computational modeling study examining COVID-19 severity and nutraceutical interactions did not specifically highlight Andrographis among its key findings, leaving its relevance to human immune outcomes less directly addressed by this dataset. The overall direction of the evidence is supportive, but the near-exclusive reliance on non-human subjects is a significant limitation, and findings from poultry or shrimp models cannot be straightforwardly extended to human immune health without dedicated human trials.