As the threat of Human
Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) persists
to rise, effective drug treatments are required to treat the infected people.
Even though combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) provides stable viral
suppression, it is not devoid of undesirable side effects, especially in
persons undergoing long-term treatment. The present therapy finds its
limitations in the emergence of multidrug resistance and accordingly finding
new drugs and novel targets is the need of the hour to treat the infected
persons and further to attack HIV reservoirs in the body like brain, lymph
nodes to achieve the ultimate goal of complete eradication of HIV and AIDS.
Natural products such as plant-originated compounds and plant extracts have
enormous potential to become drug leads with anti-HIV and neuroprotective
activity. Accordingly, many research groups are exploring the biodiversity of
the plant kingdom to find new and better anti-HIV drugs with novel mechanisms
of action and for HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND). The basic
challenge that still persists is to develop viral replication-targeted therapy
using novel anti-HIV compounds with new mode of action, accepted toxicity and
less resistance profile.
Against this backdrop, the World Health Organization
(WHO) suggested the need to evaluate ethno-medicines for the management of
HIV/AIDS. Consequently, there is need to evaluate traditional medicine,
particularly medicinal plants and other natural products that may yield
effective and affordable therapeutic agents.
Although there are a good number
of reports on traditional uses of plants to treat various diseases, knowledge
of herbal remedies used to manage HIV/AIDS and HAND are scanty, vague and not
well documented. In this review, plant substances showing a promising action
that is anti-HIV and HAND will be explored along with what they interact.
Since
some plant substances are also known to modulate several cellular factors which
are also involved in the replication of HIV and hence their role as potential
candidates will be discussed. HIV/AIDS being an exceptional epidemic, demands
an exceptional approach and that forms very much focus for the current review.
Below: Effect of Withanolide A on
viability of SK-N-MC cells treated with HIV-1Ba-L (clade B), Cocaine and
Methamphetamine (METH): SK-N-MC cells were infected with HIV in the presence of
Cocaine/METH. The MTT assay is showing that Withanolide A reverse
the neurotoxic effects on cell viability induced by HIV, Cocaine, METH and
combined treatment. Withanolide A alone showed significant increase in cell
viability. The values were expressed as percentage of cell viability compared
to control cells and are the mean ± SD of four experiments. ∗∗∗, ∗∗, ∗indicates a statistically significant difference (p,0.0001), (p,0.0006), and (p,0.0185), respectively, compared to controls. WA, Withanolide
A; CO, COC, Cocaine; METH, Methamphetamine.
Full article at: http://goo.gl/hUoK0z
By:
Department of
Immunology, Institute of NeuroImmune Pharmacology, Herbert Wertheim College of
Medicine (http://medicine.fiu.edu/), Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA
Edited by: Francois Villinger, Emory University
School of Medicine, USA
Reviewed by: Sara Louise Cosby, Queen’s University
Belfast, UK; Santosh Kumar, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, USA;
Vijayakumar Velu, Emory University, USA
*Correspondence: Madhavan P. N. Nair, ude.uif@mrian;
Venkata S. Atluri, moc.loa@irultard
†These authors have contributed equally to
this work.
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