Anti-HIV Transcriptase Herbs: A Review

Abstract

To date, combination antiretroviral (ARV) medication is considered the most effective treatment for people infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). The primary purpose of ARV administration is to reduce the viral load, thereby enhancing HIV patients' immunological condition and minimizing mortality from opportunistic infections. Nowadays, a combination of NRTI (nucleoside analog reverse transcriptase inhibitor) and NNRTI (non-nucleoside analog reverse transcriptase inhibitor) is accepted therapy for HIV patients. Both have a mechanism for inhibiting the reverse transcriptase (RT) enzyme during viral replication. Reverse transcriptase (RT) is an enzyme that plays a role in the reverse transcription stage of the virus reproduction process. HIV RT converts proviral RNA into DNA, and the copy infects the host or target cell. The use of RT inhibitors for HIV-infected patients is becoming more common. Many investigations were conducted on plants that have the potential to operate as anti-HIV RT. In this review, we go over some of the potential herbs that serve as RT inhibitors. In this literature review, a search was carried out with the help of several search engines that matched the criteria, namely reverse transcriptase herbal inhibitors for HIV. The author came to the conclusion that there were 18 plants with relatively high activity as anti-HIV medicines with varied traits and working mechanisms from 162 papers gathered based on keywords. Furthermore, the findings of this study will serve as the foundation for the development of anti-HIV herbs as well as a source of antiretroviral therapy ingredients in the future.