ANTIVIRAL ACTIVITY OF SELECTED INDIAN MEDICINAL HERBS AGAINST HEPATITIS E VIRUS (HEV) IN THE ESTABLISHED PORCINE CELL MODEL

Background: It is known that hepatitis E virus (HEV) is zoonotically transmitted to humans and while other forms of hepatitis have been in focus for drug and vaccine development, HEV related mortality in case of pregnant women has raised upto 20%. Methods: HEV proteins, were successfully extracted from 22 pig stool samples and the presence of HEV capsid antigen encoded by the open reading frame 2 (ORF2) was confirmed suing dot blot and western blotting in 4 samples. HEV proteins were inoculated in pig epithelial cells (CLAB) and pig and goat macrophage cell lines (PoM2 and GOMA) to develop an in vitro model for observing the cytopathic effects (CPE). The HEV infected cell cultures were subjected to extracts obtained from Kaempfaria galanga (Galangal), Mimosa Pudica (Touch me not), Coleus aromaticus (Doddapatre) and Paederia foetida (Stinkvine). Results: We showed that a single treatment of 56.34 ug/ml HEV protein for 3 hours induced characteristic growth patterns of cells until 4 passages. We also found that extracts of K. galanga significantly (p