August 16, 2013

Antiviral activities of Indonesian medicinal plants in the East Java region against hepatitis C virus

Virology Journal 2013, 10:259 doi:10.1186/1743-422X-10-259

Research

Tutik Sri Wahyuni, Lydia Tumewu, Adita Ayu Permanasari, Evhy Apriani, Myrna Adianti, Abdul Rahman, Aty Widyawaruyanti, Maria Inge Lusida, Achmad Fuad, Soetjipto, Nasronudin, Hiroyuki Fuchino, Nobuo Kawahara, Ikuo Shoji, Lin Deng, Chie Aoki and Hak Hotta

For all author emails, please log on.

Published: 13 August 2013

Abstract (provisional)

Background

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a major cause of liver disease and a potential cause of substantial morbidity and mortality worldwide. The overall prevalence of HCV infection is 2%, representing 120 million people worldwide. Current standard treatment using pegylated interferon and ribavirin is effective in only 50% of the patients infected with HCV genotype 1, and is associated with significant side effects. Therefore, it is still of importance to develop new drugs for treatment of HCV. Antiviral substances obtained from natural products, including medicinal plants, are potentially good targets to study. In this study, we evaluated Indonesian medicinal plants for their anti-HCV activities.

Methods

Ethanol extracts of 21 samples derived from 17 species of medicinal plants explored in the East Java region were tested. Anti-HCV activities were determined by a cell culture method using Huh7.5 cells and HCV strains of 9 different genotypes (1a to 7a, 1b and 2b).

Results

Four of the 21 samples tested showed antiviral activities against HCV: Toona sureni leaves (TSL) with 50% inhibitory concentrations (IC50) of 13.9 and 2.0 mug/ml against the HCV J6/JFH1-P47 and -P1 strains, respectively, Melicope latifolia leaves (MLL) with IC50 of 3.5 and 2.1 mug/ml, respectively, Melanolepis multiglandulosa stem (MMS) with IC50 of 17.1 and 6.2 mug/ml, respectively, and Ficus fistulosa leaves (FFL) with IC50 of 15.0 and 5.7 mug/ml, respectively. Time-of-addition experiments revealed that TSL and MLL inhibited both at the entry and post-entry steps while MMS and FFL principally at the entry step. TSL and MLL inhibited all of 11 HCV strains of all the genotypes tested to the same extent. On the other hand, FFL showed significantly weaker inhibitory activities against the HCV genotype 1a strain, and MMS against the HCV strains of genotypes 2b and 7a to a lesser extent, compared to the other HCV genotypes.

Conclusions

Ethanol extracts of TSL, MLL, MMS and FFL showed antiviral activities against all the HCV genotypes tested with the exception that some genotype(s) showed significant resistance to FFL and to MMS to a lesser extent. These plant extracts may be good candidates for the development of anti-HCV drugs.

The complete article is available as a provisional PDF. The fully formatted PDF and HTML versions are in production.

Source

No comments:

Post a Comment