Abstract
Olea europaea L. var. sativa (OESA) preparations are widely used in traditional medicine in the Mediterranean region to prevent and treat different diseases. In this research, olive extracts derived from the leaves of the OESA tree have been screened for antioxidant activity by two methods: the DPPH free radical scavenging assay (DPPH) and the Ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) assay. The DPPH assay showed that OESA possesses a stronger antioxidant activity (84%) at 1 mg/mL while the FRAP method showed a strong metal ion chelating activity (90%) at 1 mg/mL. The low IC50 values, obtained by two different methods, implies that OESA has a noticeable effect on scavenging free radicals comparable to standards. During EBV infection, the free radicals increased triggering lipid oxidation. Therefore, the monitoring of the secondary lipid peroxidation products was done by measuring malonaldehyde (MDA) and conjugated dienes (DC). The simultaneous treatment of Raji cells with OESA and TPA, as an inductorof the lytic cycle, generated a significant decrease in MDA levels and DC (p < 0.05). Besides, Raji cells simultaneously exposed to TPA and OESA exhibited a percentage of EBV-positive fluorescence cells lower than TPA treated cells (**** p < 0.0001). This suggests that OESA treatment has a protective effect against EBV lytic cycle induction.
Highlights
The vegetable kingdom has always been an inexhaustible source of resources useful for multiple fields of application
The antioxidant capacity of Olea europaea L. var. sativa (OESA) was determined according to the DPPH free radical scavenging assay and the Ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) assay
The scavenging effect of OESA was calculated as reported in Materials and Methods and the results were expressed as a percentage of radical scavenging activity
Summary
The vegetable kingdom has always been an inexhaustible source of resources useful for multiple fields of application. Plants have provided for the basic needs of the human species, starting from food, buildings, clothing manufacturing, and up to medicinal agents for the treatment of diseases [1]. The use of plants to cure several kinds of human diseases has a long history. Many medicinal plants are widely studied for their bioactive molecules which have anticancer, antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, and antimicrobial activity. Plants and purified natural products represent a rich resource for novel antiviral drugs [2,3,4,5,6]. After the actual pandemic scenario caused by SARS-CoV-2 which represented a severe threat to public health, the scientific community paid more attention to the study of new potential natural antiviral drugs and their antiviral mechanisms. There is, a large body of literature reporting the antiviral activity of plants and their constituents [7,8,9]
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