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Review
. 2021 Aug:140:111596.
doi: 10.1016/j.biopha.2021.111596. Epub 2021 Jun 11.

Antiviral activities of flavonoids

Syed Lal Badshah  1 , Shah Faisal  2 , Akhtar Muhammad  2 , Benjamin Gabriel Poulson  3 , Abdul Hamid Emwas  3 , Mariusz Jaremko  4
Affiliations
Review

Antiviral activities of flavonoids

Syed Lal Badshah et al. Biomed Pharmacother. 2021 Aug.

Abstract

Flavonoids are natural phytochemicals known for their antiviral activity. The flavonoids acts at different stages of viral infection, such as viral entrance, replication and translation of proteins. Viruses cause various diseases such as SARS, Hepatitis, AIDS, Flu, Herpes, etc. These, and many more viral diseases, are prevalent in the world, and some (i.e. SARS-CoV-2) are causing global chaos. Despite much struggle, effective treatments for these viral diseases are not available. The flavonoid class of phytochemicals has a vast number of medicinally active compounds, many of which are studied for their potential antiviral activity against different DNA and RNA viruses. Here, we reviewed many flavonoids that showed antiviral activities in different testing environments such as in vitro, in vivo (mice model) and in silico. Some flavonoids had stronger inhibitory activities, showed no toxicity & the cell proliferation at the tested doses are not affected. Some of the flavonoids used in the in vivo studies also protected the tested mice prophylactically from lethal doses of virus, and effectively prevented viral infection. The glycosides of some of the flavonoids increased the solubility of some flavonoids, and therefore showed increased antiviral activity as compared to the non-glycoside form of that flavonoid. These phytochemicals are active against different disease-causing viruses, and inhibited the viruses by targeting the viral infections at multiple stages. Some of the flavonoids showed more potent antiviral activity than the market available drugs used to treat viral infections.

Keywords: Flavonoids; Inhibitors; Natural products; Replication; Viruses.

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Conflict of interest statement

All the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Figures

ga1
Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
General structure of a flavonoid.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Synthesis of Flavonoids Using Baker–Venkataraman rearrangement.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
(a) Synthesis of fluorinated ketone intermediates. (b) Synthesis of 6-fluoroflavone. (c) Synthesis of 6-Fluoroflavanone through acetic acid.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
(a) Initial Steps of synthesis of starting material for flavonoids. (b) Synthesis of chalcone for making flavonoids derivatives.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Synthesis of flavanone and flavonoids.
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Synthesis of myricetin derivatives with antiviral activities against tobacco mosaic virus.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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