ANTI HEPATITIS B VIRUS (HBV) ACTIVITY OF EXTRACTS OF Camellia sinensis, THE GREEN TEA

THANIGAIVEL S.¹, DURGADEVI H.², ROHAN N.³, MYTHILY V.⁴, ELANCHEZHIYAN M.^5
1Department of Microbiology, Dr. ALM. PG Institute of Basic Medical Science, University of Madras, Taramani-600 113, Chennai, India.
²Department of Microbiology, Dr. ALM. PG Institute of Basic Medical Science, University of Madras, Taramani-600 113, Chennai, India.
³Department of Microbiology, Dr. ALM. PG Institute of Basic Medical Science, University of Madras, Taramani-600 113, Chennai, India.
⁴Blood Bank, Voluntary Health Services, Adyar-600 025, Chennai, India.
⁵Department of Microbiology, Dr. ALM. PG Institute of Basic Medical Science, University of Madras, Taramani-600 113, Chennai, India.

Received : 13-11-2013     Accepted : 12-12-2013     Published : 24-12-2013
Volume : 2     Issue : 1       Pages : 39 - 43
World Res J Med Aromat Plant 2.1 (2013):39-43

Viral diseases are a continuous challenging problem of the global public health. Antiviral therapy for the chronic viral disease (CVD) like HBV is still an emerging field. Literature ravel that HBV related diseases kills more than a million people each year and the end stage viral hepatitis could lead to hepatocellular carcinoma and liver cirrhosis. The morbidity and mortality of persistent HBV infection are a major public health concern. Anti HBV therapy including treatment with lamivudine, tenofovir, entecavir, etc. are currently in use besides interferon therapy. Unfortunately anti HBV drugs suffer criticism of developing drug resistance besides incrementing non-responder population. This necessitates to explore for novel drugs from natural sources. Camellia sinensis (C. sinensis) (Green tea) is a popular refreshing beverage throughout the world and it has been shown to possess several bioactivities. In this study anti HBV activity of aqueous and Methanolic extracts of C. sinensis and its purified compound epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), were tested by HBsAg binding inhibition assay. EGCG out-performed all other preparation and it had the maximum anti HBV activity with minimum amount of EGCG. A dose response study showed that EGCG had 93.8% HBV inhibitory activity with 250 µg/ml and its 50% inhibitory concentration (IC₅₀) value was 55.1 µg/ml and IC₉₀ value of 171.7 µg/ml. Among the crude extracts, methanolic preparation showed 91.26% inhibition with 2.5 mg/ml and had an IC₅₀ value of 0.23 mg/ml and an IC₉₀ of 2.25mg/ml. Aqueous extract was marginally weaker to induce HBV inhibition with an IC₅₀ value of 0.5993 mg/ml and an IC₉₀ of 2.7 mg/ml. These data clearly indicated that derivatives of C. sinensis exhibited strong anti HBV activity. It is speculated that the observed anti HBV activity of C. sinensis may be due to interference with viral entry.