Background
Chronic Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a major health problem and available anti-HBV drugs are known to cause side effects in addition to increased incidence of drug resistance. In the current study anti-HBV properties of Centella asiatica and Camellia sinensis was evaluated.
Methods
For the assay, equal volume of HBV virus was mixed with extract of C. asiatica or C. sinensis and incubated at 37°C for 5 days. The supernatant was assayed for the presence of bound/unbound HBsAg using ELISA. A dose response analysis was done for each extract and cytotoxicity of the each extract was measured by MTT assay.
Results
Dose response anti HBV revealed that methanolic extract C. asiatica indicated that 2.5 mg/mL concentrations was inhibitory to 0.75 pg/mL of HBV. Aqueous and methanolic extract of C. sinensis indicated that 0.5 mg/mL and 0.25 concentrations inhibited HBV, respectively. Interestingly, EGCG indicated 1.5 pg/mL HBV was inhibited by 25µg/mL. These concentrations were well tolerated by HepG2 cells and the non toxic concentration was up to 800 µg/mL.
Conclusion
The study showed that EGCG outperformed other extracts and had anti-HBV activity with minimal concentration (25 µg/mL). This is followed by extracts of C. sisensis which exhibited medium anti HBV activity. Poorest anti-HBV activity was noticed with C. asiatica i.e.2.5 mg. None of the extracts had cytotoxicity. From this study we could conclude that C. sinensis extracts are better in inhibiting HBV.