HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS (HIV-1) REVERSE TRANSCRIPTASE INHIBITORY ACTIVITY OF SELECTED PLANT EXTRACT (original) (raw)

Since the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus as the causative agent of AIDS New chemical entities with such activity may be identified through a variety of approaches, one of them being the screening of natural products. Plant substances are especially explored due to their amazing structural diversity and their broad range of biological activities. Several plant extracts have been shown to possess activity against HIV by inhibiting various viral enzymes (Vermani and Garg, 2002). Various resource-poor settings, government-sponsored ART programmes discourage the use of traditional medicines, fearing that the efficacy of antiretroviral drugs may be inhibited by such natural products, or that their pharmacological interactions could lead to toxicity (Chinsembu, 2009). Medicinal plants like Osimum sanctum (Anuya et al., 2010), Phyllanthus myrtifolium (Chang et al., 1995), Linocera japonica (Joshi, 2002), Rhus chinensis (Rui-Rui wang et al., 2008) and Jatropha curcas (Kazhila et al., 2010) as potential sources of new active agents not only combine the advantage of being relatively non-toxic and hence more tolerable than rationally designed drugs, but also represent an affordable and valuable source of pharmacologically active substances that can be made sufficiently available through cultivation. With the rapid explosion of new molecular targets available for drug discovery and advances in high put screening technology, there has been a dramatic increase in interest from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries in the huge molecular diversity present in plant sources. In this study the medicinal plant extracts used in tribal areas of Warangal districts is exhibits significant potency against various bacterial and fungal pathogens, as well as potent antioxidant activity. It was therefore decided to analyse the anti-HIV activity of these potential medicinal plant and also evaluate its cytotoxicity in PBMC cell cultures.