Advances of Researches on Anti-HIV Agents from Traditional Herbs

The current approach for dealing with the global pandemic of AIDs focuses on pharmaceuticals. Nowadays the classic treatment of AIDs is HAART therapy. However, most of the people living with HIV/AIDs around the world have little or no access to the treatment due to the high cost of the therapy, especially for those suffers in developing countries. Additionally, such treatment has been proved to be associated with toxic side effects and drug resistance. As a result, the search for better anti-HIV agents continues, and much attention has been focused on natural sources, particularly plant species. Tens of thousands of herbs have been screened for anti-HIV activity all over the world, thus lots of new compounds have been discovered from the extracts of the anti-HIV herbs. Many of them are demonstrated to harbor inhibitory activity against HIV. The action mechanisms of them include inhibiting the activities of reverse transcriptase, protease and integrase or weakening infection at the level of viral entry. This provides researchers a clue to synthesize new drugs for anti-HIV battle. Some of the synthetic derivatives of the anti-HIV natural products are shown to have even higher inhibitory effects in vitro than its natural counterparts. Some mixed formulation of these anti-HIV herbs are in clinical trials or already applied in the treatment of patients living with HIV/AIDs. Some of them are shown to lower plasma viral load, enchance immune function, relieve related symptoms, improve the quality of life or to combine with HAART therapy to alleviate the side effects of biomedical drugs. In the present review, the current laboratory findings and clinical trials of anti-HIV agents from natural sources, particularly herbs in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) are reviewed. Drug interactions with HAART therapy and criteria of clinical evaluation of TCM treatment are also included.