Yellow Fever/Hemorrhagic Fever and Oregano, Mugwort and various Verbenas

The essential oils evaluated in the study showed antiviral activities against YFV.(Yellow Fever Virus) The mode of action seems to be direct virus inactivation.

Inhibitory effect of essential oils obtained from plants grown in Colombia on yellow fever virus replication in vitro

Rocío Meneses^12*, Raquel E Ocazionez¹², Jairo R Martínez¹³ and Elena E Stashenko¹³

• *Corresponding author: Rocío Meneses rocio.meneses@gmail.com

Author Affiliations

¹Centro Nacional de Investigaciones para la Agroindustrialización de Especies Vegetales Aromáticas y Medicinales Tropicales, CENIVAM. Universidad Industrial de Santander, Bucaramanga, Colombia

²Centro de Investigaciones en Enfermedades Tropicales, CINTROP, Laboratorio de Arbovirus, Piedecuesta, Colombia

³Centro de Investigación en Biomoléculas, CIBIMOL, Bucaramanga, Colombia

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Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials 2009, 8:8  doi:10.1186/1476-0711-8-8

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.ann-clinmicrob.com/content/8/1/8

Received:	25 November 2008
Accepted:	6 March 2009
Published:	6 March 2009

© 2009 Meneses et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Background

An antiviral drug is needed for the treatment of patients suffering from yellow fever. Several compounds present in plants can inactive in vitro a wide spectrum of animal viruses.

Aim

In the present study the inhibitory effect of essential oils of Lippia alba, Lippia origanoides, Oreganum vulgare and Artemisia vulgaris on yellow fever virus (YFV) replication was investigated.

Methods

The cytotoxicity (CC₅₀) on Vero cells was evaluated by the MTT reduction method. The minimum concentration of the essential oil that inhibited virus titer by more than 50% (MIC) was determined by virus yield reduction assay. YFV was incubated 24 h at 4°C with essential oil before adsorption on Vero cell, and viral replication was carried out in the absence or presence of essential oil. Vero cells were exposed to essential oil 24 h at 37°C before the adsorption of untreated-virus.

Results

The CC₅₀ values were less than 100 μg/mL and the MIC values were 3.7 and 11.1 μg/mL. The CC₅₀/MIC ratio was of 22.9, 26.4, 26.5 and 8.8 for L. alba, L origanoides, O. vulgare and A. vulgaris, respectively. The presence of essential oil in the culture medium enhances the antiviral effect: L. origanoides oil at 11.1 μg/mLproduced a 100% reduction of virus yield, and the same result was observed with L. alba, O. vulgare and A. vulgaris oils at100 μg/mL. No reduction of virus yield was observed when Vero cells were treated with essential oil before the adsorption of untreated-virus.

Conclusion

The essential oils evaluated in the study showed antiviral activities against YFV. The mode of action seems to be direct virus inactivation.

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