Antiviral

The entire world is facing a worst situation of pandemic ever. It’s been more than 18 months after the initial reports on Covid from China, and the pandemic is still going.  As per the data available over the WHO website as of 23 June 2021, there have been 178,837,204 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 3,880,450 deaths, reported to WHO. As of 21 June 2021, a total of 2,414,347,324 vaccine doses have been administered. Despite of having more than 15 vaccines for Covid-19; the challenge to treat a patient with a define line of treatment remains the same. In the present review we have made an attempt to summarize the various medicines which are being used by medical practitioner in India and overseas. Use of different drug molecules like Remdesivir, Tocilzumab, Hydroxychloroquine, Azithromycine, Ivermectin, Steroids, Doxicycline, Ecosprine, Low molecular weight Heparin, Lopinavir and Ritonavir, Nitazoxanide, Baricitinib etc. were highlighted; although the list is long. A focus is made on the different types of vaccines available till date and their status in various countries.

Since immemorial time, utilization of medicinal plants has been in practice by the practitioner to treat variety of ailments without knowing the active bio-compound which lead to the reduction or elimination of symptoms of the disease. Recent advancement in technologies became a turning point in health care setting where many medicinal plants which are gifted from the nature were being employed in research to synthesized variety of phytochemical compounds which were responsible for the various pharmacological properties of the plants. Few compounds which were plant derivative have been patented for the commercial use to treat illness. In this review, medicinal plants related to few pharmacological properties like anticancer, antiviral, antidiabetics, antifungal were reviewed and documented. Also the phytochemical constituents were reviewed and documented. This review proved few related pharmacological properties of the plants where these plants were employed in the folk medicine. Advancement in technologies and also research fundings provide the suitable platform for the researchers to conduct extensive research on the medicinal plants.

The use of microbial products in drug discovery is an ancient and well-established practice. Actinomycetes are known producers of pharmacological and anti-viral agents. This study aimed to screen the crude extract of Actinomycetes some Egyptian collection for their anti (Hepatitis A Virus (HAV-H10), Coxsackie B4 virus (COX B4) and Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV-1)) then, select the most potent actinomycete crude extract (having highest antiviral activity) for processes of purification, identification and mechanism of action. The maximum non toxic dose (MNTD) of each actinomycete extract was determined then antiviral activity against fast growing viral strains replicating in African green monkey kidney (VERO) cells was studied by the reduction in the number of plaques formed by the viruses. A total of 18 extracts Actinomycete isolates with antimicrobial potential against bacteria and fungi was screened for their antiviral activity. The results indicated that; Mnf-21kt extract showed the most promising antiviral activity against three virus strains while extracts from kfs-1ss and kfs-7ss showed inhibition activity against HAV-H10 and HSV-1 only. After purification of extract Mnf-21kt then the analysis of physico-chemical, elemental and spectroscopic analysis (UV, IR, H.NMR, Mass spectroscopy) indicated that; the active compound has the nature of nucleoside analog. On other hand, when the purified active substance was tested for its mechanism of action against HAV-H10, the result indicated that it has induced significant anti-infectivity and anti-replicative effect. The purified compound has promising broad spectrum antiviral activity in an in vitro system.