The willow-leaved justicia (Justicia gendarussa), is a medicinal plant found throughout Southeast Asia, used through the ages abound, especially in traditional Asian medicine to treat arthritis, has now been discovered to contain an anti-HIV compound more potent than AZT.
HIV infects CD4 white blood cells of our immune system and usually kills these CD4 cells thereby leaving HIV patients susceptible to infections with all sorts of microbes that don’t normally establish an infection in healthy people.
Currently not curable, HIV is treated with a combination of drugs — collectively called anti-retrovial therapy or the ‘cocktail’ — that hit different stages of the HIV life cycle.
Initial treatment primarily involves three drugs: two nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors plus an integrase strand transfer inhibitor, a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors or a protease inhibitor combined with a booster of cobicstat or ritonavir.
The first anti-HIV drug, AZT (also known as zidovudine) was developed and approved in 1987, inhibits the RT enzyme and remains the cornerstone of HIV drug cocktails today.
Nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, like AZT, and integrase strand transfer inhibitors stop the HIV virus’s genetic material from getting into the WBC’s nucleus where it would be replicated. Protease inhibitors help stop the
The justicia is an evergreen plant mostly found in moist areas, and is believed to be native to China and is distributed widely across India, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia. In Indian and Chinese traditional medicine, the plant is recommended to treat fever, hemiplegia, rheumatism, arthritis, headache, earache, muscle pain, respiratory disorders, and digestive trouble.
Through a new study carried out by researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago, Hong Kong Baptist University, and the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, a chemical, patentiflorin A, has come to the fore. The chemical is found to inhibit the reverse transcriptase (RT), an enzyme needed for HIV to incorporate its genetic code into a cell’s DNA.
The compound was identified in a screening of more than 4,500 plant extracts for their effect against the HIV virus.
“Patentiflorin A represents a novel anti-HIV agent that can be added to the current anti-HIV drug cocktail regimens to increase suppression of the virus and prevention of AIDS,” said lead co-author Lijun Rong, professor of microbiology and immunology in the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
In studies of human cells infected with the HIV virus, patentiflorin A had a much more significant inhibition effect on the RT enzyme.
“Patentiflorin A was able to inhibit the action of RT much more effectively than AZT, and was able to do this both in the earliest stages of HIV infection when the virus enters macrophage cells, and alter infection when it is present in T cells of the immune system,” Prof. Rong said.
“It also was effective against known drug-resistant strains of the HIV virus, making it a very promising candidate for further development into a new HIV drug.”
The ability of this chemical to work earlier in HIV infections means it may even help to decrease the amount of latent virus that escapes the immune system and remains, ready to launch an infection later.
To prevent depletion of the valuable natural resource — the willow-leaved justicia that has already given us at least two useful medicinals — the scientists found a way to synthesize patentiflorin A in the lab and have an international patent on the product approved in China, Europe, and pending in the US. They are looking for commercial companies interested in manufacturing and testing patentiflorin A further.
