Ficus septica plant extracts for treating Dengue virus in vitro

Nan-Chieh Huang; Wan-Ting Hung; Wei-Lun Tsai; Feng-Yi Lai; You-Sheng Lin; Mei-Shu Huang; Jih-Jung Chen; Wei-Yu Lin; Jing-Ru Weng; Tsung-Hsien Chang

doi:10.7717/peerj.3448

Ficus septica plant extracts for treating Dengue virus in vitro

PeerJ. 2017 Jun 8:5:e3448. doi: 10.7717/peerj.3448. eCollection 2017.

Authors

Nan-Chieh Huang^#¹, Wan-Ting Hung^#², Wei-Lun Tsai^#³, Feng-Yi Lai⁴, You-Sheng Lin⁵, Mei-Shu Huang⁵, Jih-Jung Chen⁶, Wei-Yu Lin⁷, Jing-Ru Weng⁸, Tsung-Hsien Chang^{5

9}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Family Medicine, Zuoying Branch of Kaohsiung Armed Forces General Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
² Section of critical care medicine, Kaohsiung Veteran General Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
³ Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Internal Medicine, Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
⁴ Deparment of Nursing, Shu-Zen College of Medicine and Management, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
⁵ Department of Medical Education and Research, Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
⁶ Faculty of Pharmacy, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan.
⁷ Department of Pharmacy, Kinmen Hospital, Kinmen, Taiwan.
⁸ Department of Marine Biotechnology and Resources, National Sun Yat-sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
⁹ Department of Medical Laboratory Science and Biotechnology, Chung Hwa University of Medical Technology, Tainan, Taiwan.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Dengue virus types 1-4 (DENV-1-4) are positive-strand RNA viruses with an envelope that belongs to the Flaviviridae. DENV infection threatens human health worldwide. However, other than supportive treatments, no specific therapy is available for the infection. In order to discover novel medicine against DENV, we tested 59 crude extracts, without cytotoxicity, from 23 plants in vitro; immunofluorescence assay revealed that the methanol extracts of fruit, heartwood, leaves and stem from Ficus septica Burm. f. had a promising anti-DENV-1 and DENV-2 effect. However, infection with the non-envelope picornavirus, Aichi virus, was not inhibited by treatment with F. septica extracts. F. septica may be a candidate antiviral drug against an enveloped virus such as DENV.

Keywords: Aichi virus; Crude extract; Dengue virus; Ficus septica.

Grants and funding

This work was supported in part by grants from Kaohsiung Armed Forces General Hospital Zuoying Branch (ZAFGH105-10), the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MHW-10347) and Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital, Taiwan (VGHKS105-134). There was no additional external funding received for this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.