Cases of HIV infection remain a global health problem and this case has increased every year. HIV infection can cause opportunistic infections caused by a decrease in the body’s immune system so that the severity of sufferers increases, which results in high mortality. Therefore we need the right treatment and prevention steps to be able to reduce the rate of infection by HIV in Indonesia.
The treatment that has been carried out with HIV antiretroviral (ARV) drugs. Antiretroviral drugs can suppress the rate of HIV replication in the patient’s body. However, recent research shows that there are side effects caused by the consumption of ARVs, namely drug resistance. The use of old ARV drugs can cause this drug resistance by triggering resistance, or it can be caused by sufferers who have been infected with a resistant virus. Thus, it needs to be sought to find alternative treatments that are effective and have a slight possibility of resistance, and one way is by finding out the candidates for herbal medicines.
Some components of herbal extracts are known to have anti-HIV potential, such as alkaloids. The element of this herbal extract can inhibit one of HIV cycle stage: fusion stage with the host cell (in this case T cells) or the step where HIV genetic material will insert into the genetic material of the host cell and control the host cell to produce the constituent proteins HIV body.
Indonesia is known as a country that has a high diversity of plants and many plants that have potential as antivirals. One of the plants that have anti-HIV potential is known to come from the Moraceae family of the genus Ficus sp. otherwise known as banyan. The plant from the Moraceae family is known to contain mulberrin, morusin and nanggenol N from the flavonoid class to inhibit HIV replication. In addition to stem extracts from the Ficus glomerate group, which has inhibitory tests for HIV replication, in this study another Moraceae golognan: Ficus fistulosa also showed inhibition of HIV replication in vitro.
The process of finding herbal medicines beforehand can be used as an alternative therapy through several stages, including stages in vitro, in vivo testing, pre-clinical trials, and clinical trials. In this in vitro study, HIV was infected in cells cultured in culture bottles and placed in incubators. HIV infection in these cells can be observed by the presence of cytopathic effects or changes in cell structure due to viral infection. Cytopathic effect that appears due to HIV infection is the formation of giant cells with more than one nucleus because these cells are fused or joined together. These antiviral candidates can be extracts from stems, leaves, or roots. In this study extracts from Ficus fistulosa leaves were used. The extract will then be fractionated or separated again based on the contents of the extract until an active ingredient is found that is effective as an anti-HIV.
Antiviral is said to be effective if it has the effect of inhibiting viral replication in vitro also does not have toxic properties to healthy cells (or cells that have not been infected). In the inhibition test we carried out a culture of Ficus fistulosa extract with HIV cell culture. Ficus fistulosa extract can inhibit HIV replication after seven days, which is marked by the reduced number of cytopathic effects observed in viral cell cultures with extracts compared to virus-cell cultures alone. In addition to showing the level of inhibition using extract concentrations and fractions of Ficus fistulosa below 30ug / ml, these extracts and fractions also indicate that this herbal ingredient is not toxic to healthy cells in the toxicity test. The toxicity test was carried out by culturing the extract or fraction of Ficus fistulosa with cells that had not been infected by HIV for 7 days. After 7 days, they measured the level of cell viability in culture.
The results of this study are expected to be used as a reference as an alternative treatment for HIV in the future. The research needs to be continued to see the effectiveness of the inhibition of Ficus fistulosa extract in vivo so that it can be known whether the results of this in vitro study can be applied to in vivo conditions before pre-clinical and clinical trials.
Author: Dwi Wahyu Indriati, S.Si, Ph.D
Link:
Indriati, D.W., Tumewu, L., Widyawaruyanti, A., Khairunisa, S.Q. 2020. The activities of methanol extract, hexane and ethyl acetate fractions from Ficus fistulosa in HIV inhibition in vitro. Research Journal of Pharmacy and Technology. 13(1)
http://www.indianjournals.com/ijor.aspx?target=ijor:rjpt&volume=13&issue=1&article=038
DOI: 10.5958/0974-360X.2020.00038.4
