Herbs with anti-CMV activity - triphala?

[GlassCannonLife]

I'm not sure if anyone has discussed these before, but I couldn't find anything (maybe I searched poorly, forgive my current state).

I was having a look into herbs that have antiviral activity against CMV, and stumbled onto one paper that seemed to be interesting. It is an older study from 1996 that you can find here.

In it, they look at the in vitro and in vivo (immunocomprimised mouse model) activity of 4 herbs against CMV: geum japonicum, the most effective one that they also use to do a comparison with ganciclovir and find it has an equivalent effect to 2 mg/kg ganciclovir dosing; syzygium aromaticum (aka the spice clove), terminalia chebula (a herb used in the ayuverdic herb blend known as triphala), and rhus javanica (had activity against hsv so they included it but it had no effect against CMV so I didn't look into it at all).

In infected lung, they found the following effect on virus yield:
- water: 5.68 +/- 2.85
- geum japonicum: 1.88 +/- 1.13
- syzygium aromaticum: 3.35 +/- 3.15
- terminalia chebula: 2.24 +/- 2.22
- rhus javanica: 6.70 +/- 8.18

These were dosed at 250 mg/kg 3x a day, which is a human equivalent dose of 61 mg/kg daily (roughly 5 g for 80 kg human).

I couldn't find geum japonicum anywhere, so I checked the others. Clove is readily available but apparently max consumption is recommended as 2.5 mg/kg.

Terminalia chebula was more interesting. There aren't any clinical sources that I found (so far - I figured I should write this up before I lose/forget everything), but other terminalia species have been used at 1.5 g daily with no issues. An interesting article on terminalia can be found here.

Has anyone heard about these or tried any of them? @Hip have you encountered these in your antiviral herb searches? The terminalia family / triphala blend sounds like it could be a good thing to trial out.

Also @Martin aka paused||M.E., you had said you have elevated IL-8 right.? Not sure if I remembered correctly. But interestingly terminalia chebula is mentioned to lower IL-8 in h. Pylori infected gastric cells - could you possibly have h. Pylori?

 

[Martin aka paused||M.E.]

Pylori infected gastric cells - could you possibly have h. Pylori?

I had multiple stomach biopsies and all were negative

 

[Hip]

Has anyone heard about these or tried any of them? @Hip have you encountered these in your antiviral herb searches? The terminalia family / triphala blend sounds like it could be a good thing to trial out.

Yes, I looked I calculated the antiviral potency of some of these herbs for cytomegalovirus. See this post.

To give you some context:

Valcyte 900 mg once daily, Potency Factor = 4410
Terminalia chebula, 3 grams twice daily, Potency Factor = 297


So the antiviral drug Valcyte is around 15 times stronger than Terminalia chebula. And even with Valcyte, it usually takes a year of daily use to achieve the full effects.

 

[GlassCannonLife]

Yes, I looked I calculated the antiviral potency of some of these herbs for cytomegalovirus. See this post.

To give you some context:

Valcyte 900 mg once daily, Potency Factor = 4410
Terminalia chebula, 3 grams twice daily, Potency Factor = 297


So the antiviral drug Valcyte is around 15 times stronger than Terminalia chebula. And even with Valcyte, it usually takes a year of daily use to achieve the full effects.

Ah awesome thank you for that!

Seems too low to be effective I guess.. Might be a safer alternative for long term treatment though? I wonder if there'd be a threshold potency that you need to reach.

I have been reading into the latent/lytic stages recently and it seemed that the antivirals are necessary for such extended times as they catch the cells as they swap into a lytic state. There was a paper showing that valtrex could wipe out latently infected B cells with a half like of 8 months or so, assumedly by destroying them when they would swap over in this way.

If there is no active infection and you are simply controlling for a few cells swapping into a lytic state (I read between 1 in 10 000 to 1 in 100 000 are generally latently infected), perhaps this type of herbal approach would suffice.. No way of knowing without trying it though I guess.