Abstract
Herpesviruses establish long-term latent infection for the life of the host and are known to cause numerous diseases. The prevalence of viral infection is significantly increased and causes a worldwide challenge in terms of health issues due to drug resistance. Prolonged treatment with conventional antiviral drugs is more likely to develop drug-resistant strains due to mutations of thymidine nucleoside kinase or DNA polymerase. Hence, the development of alternative treatments is clearly required. Natural products and their derivatives have played a significant role in treating herpesvirus infection rather than nucleoside analogs in drug-resistant strains with minimal undesirable effects and different mechanisms of action. Numerous plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria-derived compounds have been proved to be efficient and safe for treating human herpesvirus infection. This review covers the natural antiherpetic agents with the chemical structural class of alkaloids, flavonoids, terpenoids, polyphenols, anthraquinones, anthracyclines, and miscellaneous compounds, and their antiviral mechanisms have been summarized. This review would be helpful to get a better grasp of anti-herpesvirus activity of natural products and their derivatives, and to evaluate the feasibility of natural compounds as an alternative therapy against herpesvirus infections in humans.
Highlights
Herpesviruses (Family: Herpesviridae) are enveloped viruses containing doublestranded DNA that establish lifelong infections [1]. Their life cycle can be characterized as having two phases: lytic and latency establishment [2]. Herpesviruses derive their name from the Greek word herpes to describe the spreading lesions along the skin manifested during herpes simplex virus or varicella zoster virus infection [3]
The results demonstrated that the extract containing 11 had the highest binding affinity against the varicella zoster virus (VZV) protease, which is involved in the capsid assembly and DNA packaging of the virus with an energy of −318.299 kcal moL−1, forming hydrogen bonds with Gly146, Leu212, Arg148, and Arg147 with a bond length between 1.9 and 3.4 Å, which suggested the potential antiviral activity of the phytochemical compound due to interaction with the VZV protease
We have summarized the findings of previous literature regarding natural compounds derived from medicinal plants, animals, and bacteria with promising antiviral activity against herpesvirus infections in both cell culture and animal models
Summary
Herpesviruses (Family: Herpesviridae) are enveloped viruses containing doublestranded DNA that establish lifelong infections [1] Their life cycle can be characterized as having two phases: lytic (active viral reproduction) and latency establishment (persistence of the viral genome with no particle production and the possibility of reactivation back to lytic replication) [2]. Alpha-herpesvirus consists of herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1), HSV-2, and varicella zoster virus (VZV) These viruses have a relatively fast and short replicative cycle in epithelial cells, fibroblasts, and neurons, and latency is established in sensory neurons [5]. HHV-7 has a narrow tissue tropism, as it infects CD4+ T cells, epithelial cells in the salivary glands, and skin and lung cells [23] It may cause a roseola-like illness, acute febrile respiratory disease, and seizures in young children [19]. Among all three herpesvirus subfamilies, for alpha- and beta-herpesviruses, the lytic cycle is selected as the default path, whereas for gamma-herpesviruses, latency predominates [4]
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