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Ascorbic acid has superior antiviral and antiproliferative effects over IFN-alpha in HAM/TSP PBMC ex vivo
Retrovirology volume 8, Article number: A61 (2011)
IFN-alpha and high dose ascorbic acid (AA) have a modest clinical benefit in HAM/TSP (Nakagawa, 1996). We investigated the effect of ex vivo and in vitro AA and IFN-alpha treatment on HAM/TSP PBMC and HTLV-1-infected cell lines, respectively.
We treated cells for 48-72h ex vivo and in vitro with low-high (10-100µg/ml) dose of AA and 1000U/ml of IFN-alpha and quantified lymphoproliferation by [3H]thymidine incorporation, tetraploid DNA content and PCNA expression (flow cytometry). Viral expression was measured at the RNA (tax, LTR) and protein (Tax, p19) level by RT-PCR, Western blot and ELISA, respectively. Apoptosis was quantified by subdiploid DNA content (flow cytometry). Th1/Th2/Th17 cytokines were quantified by cytometric bead array. AA induced a dramatic 95% decrease (control 3689±755 cpm vs. AA 121±52 cpm, p=0.001) in spontaneous, virus-driven lymphoproliferation and a decrease in tax and LTR transcription in HAM/TSP PBMC. In addition, AA decreased the exacerbated ex vivo IFN-gamma production in HAM/TSP PBMC. In HTLV-1 infected cell lines (MT-2 and MT-4), AA induced a dose-dependent increase in DNA fragmentation (p=0.02, p=0.005), paralleled by a decrease in PCNA (p=0.003), as well as p19 (p<0.001) and Tax levels. These effects appear virus-specific, since high-dose (100µg/ml) AA did not exert a significant antiproliferative or pro-apoptotic effect on PBMC of normal donors. On top, AA displayed a superior antiproliferative, antiviral and immunomodulatory effect over IFN-alpha in both cell lines and HAM/TSP PBMC. Considering the selective antiproliferative and antiviral effects of AA ex vivo and in vitro, the therapeutic potential of combination therapy with high dose AA in HAM/TSP should be further explored.
References
Nakagawa M, Nakahara K, Maruyama Y, Kawabata M, Higuchi I, Kubota H, Izumo S, Arimura K, Osame M: Therapeutic trials in 200 patients with HTLV-I-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis. J Neurovirol. 1996, 2: 345-355. 10.3109/13550289609146899.
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This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Moens, B., Decanine, D., Khouri, R. et al. Ascorbic acid has superior antiviral and antiproliferative effects over IFN-alpha in HAM/TSP PBMC ex vivo. Retrovirology 8 (Suppl 1), A61 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1186/1742-4690-8-S1-A61
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1742-4690-8-S1-A61
Keywords
- Ascorbic Acid
- Thymidine Incorporation
- Viral Expression
- Cytometric Bead Array
- Infected Cell Line