A Chinese herbal formula containing Paris polyphylla, Dandelion, Woad, and Licorice appears safe and effective in reducing cytomegalovirus infection activity in pregnant women. - GreenMedInfo Summary

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the therapeutic efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine Reduqing (RDQ) against human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) in clinical and its antiviral activity in vitro. METHODS: In clinical practice, HCMV antibody was detected to determine if the case was activity infected with HCMV. Fourteen patients were found and treated with RDQ. The drug was orally administered one dose, three times a day, for 18-30 days as one therapeutic course. And the efficacy was evaluated by ELISA, PCR and other methods. The in vitro inhibitory activity of RDQ against HCMV AD169 was carried out on human embryo lung fibroblasts (HEL) by cytopathic effect inhibition method. Ganciclovir (GCV) was used for positive control. RESULTS: Fourteen pre- or during pregnant women with HCMV infection were treated with RDQ. After 18-30 days of treatment, all of them showed HCMV-IgM negative conversion, HCMV DNA negative conversion in 7/10 cases, and virus excretion by urine and cervix secretion was inhibited in 4/4 and 1/1 case. Five women gave birth to 5 normal newborns at term after treatment, among them 2 were asymptomatic virus carrier, the other 3 were uninfected. Experimental study in vitro showed that the maximal tolerance dosage (TD0) of RDQ was 20 micrograms/L, the minimal therapeutic concentration (MTC) was 5 micrograms/L, 50% inhibitory concentration (IC50) was 5 micrograms/L and the therapeutic index (TI) was 4. It suggested that RDQ had anti-HCMV activity in vitro and the effect increased with its concentration. CONCLUSION: RDQ is a safe, valuable drug for inhibiting HCMV infection especially during pregnancy.