Avaliação da atividade antiviral de isoflavonóides isolados do extrato da própolis vermelha na replicação do vírus chikungunya in vitro

Abstract

Arboviruses are viral diseases transmitted by hematophagous arthropods such as mosquitoes and ticks. The Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is an arbovirus transmitted by mosquitoes of the genus Aedes spp., responsible for recent outbreaks in Brazil, producing a high number of cases. The CHIKV infection presents characteristic symptoms of arboviruses, such as fever, headaches and muscles aches, in addition to arthralgia which, in some cases, lead to a chronic character Natural compounds possess important biological activities as, for example, the isoflavonoids vestitol, neovestitol and medicarpine, isolated from red propolis, which have already demonstrated antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, anticancer action, among others. However, up to date and to our knowledge, there are no studies encompassing the antiviral activity for these compounds. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate the antiviral activity of vestitol, neovestitol and medicarpine on the CHIKV replication employing a stable cell line (BHK-CHIKV-NCT) from baby hamster kidney cells (BHK-21), which continuously expressed the subgenomic replicon CHIKV-NCT, a construct that possesses regions that encode non-structural proteins (nsP) of the virus as well as gene "reporters", which confer luminescence, fluorescence and resistance to the antibiotic puromycin. Cell viability assays (MTT) were performed in the presence or absence of the compounds to determine the maximum non-cytotoxic concentrations of each compound, used in the antiviral assays. The results showed a statistically significant reduction in the replication of CHIKV in 71% for the vestitol and 51% for the medicarpine, showing the potential antiviral activity of these compounds isolated from red propolis to combat the chikungunya fever.