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Effect of Glycyrrhizin, an Active Component of Licorice Roots, on HIV Replication in Cultures of Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells from HIV-Seropositive Patients

2002; Karger Publishers; Volume: 70; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1159/000069334

1423-0291

Hidetaka Sasaki, Miwa Takei, Makiko Kobayashi, Richard B. Pollard, Fujio Suzuki,

HIV Research and Treatment

The effect of glycyrrhizin (GR) on HIV replication in cultures of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from HIV-infected patients was investigated. After the depletion of CD8+ T cells, PBMC from HIV+ patients (patient PBMC) and PBMC from healthy donors (healthy PBMC) were cocultured in the presence or absence of GR (100 microg/ml) for 21 days. In cultures of 13 of 42 samples of patient PBMC (13/42, 31%), GR inhibited more than 90% of HIV replication. Among 42 samples of patient PBMC, 20 were identified to be infected with a non-syncytium-inducing variant of HIV (NSI-HIV), 15 with a syncytium-inducing variant of HIV (SI-HIV), and the remaining 7 were classified as cells infected with SI-HIV and/or NSI-HIV. GR inhibited more than 90% of HIV replication in cultures of 12 patient PBMC samples infected with NSI-HIV (12/20, 60%). In patient PBMC infected with SI-HIV, GR inhibited HIV replication in only 1 patient (1/15, 7%). In cultures of patient PBMC, GR induced the production of CC chemokine ligand (CCL)4 and CCL5 in a dose-dependent manner. When the assay was performed in PBMC cultures supplemented with a mixture of monoclonal antibodies for CCL4 and CCL5, no evidence of anti-HIV activity of GR was found. These results indicate that GR has the potential to inhibit NSI-HIV replication in patient PBMC cultures by inducing the production of beta-chemokines.