In Vitro Search for Antiviral Activity against Human Cytomegalovirus from Medicinal Mushrooms Pleurotus sp. and Lentinus sp.

Human Cytomegalovirus is a ubiquitous opportunist pathogen capable of infecting newborns, immune compromised and immunosuppressed patients. Till date only a limited number of clinically approved drugs are available for treatment. All these drugs prove to be very effective against active HCMV infection but with their respective share of drawbacks. Anti-viral agents derived from natural compounds are the need of the hour. They have potent anti-viral property but lack the cytotoxic effect associated with their synthetic counterparts. In this regard the medicinal mushrooms have proven to be quite an interesting candidate of choice. We collected and isolated extracts from four different edible mushroom species and used them on in vitro cultured MRC5 and 1B4 cell lines. Cytotoxicity and anti-viral response for each mushroom was tested in a dose dependent and time dependent fashion. Among the four mushroom types, only Pleurotus sp. and Lentinus sp. were found to have potent anti-viral response with minimum cytotoxicity against human cytomegalovirus. Their crude extracts showed 100% inhibition of HCMV replication at 180 μg/ml and 160 μg/ml respectively. Our study highlights that extracts from both of these mushrooms can be used as alternative HCMV therapeutic strategy.