title: In vitro antiviral activity of dehydroepiandrosterone and its synthetic derivatives against vesicular stomatitis virus.
abstract: In this work the antiviral activity of 20 dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) analogs with different substituents at positions C-3, C-15, C-16 and C-17 were evaluated against vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) in Vero cell cultures. The selectivity indexes (SI) obtained with DHEA and epiandrosterone (EA) were 50 and 72.6, respectively. The work showed that the compounds 21-norpregna-5,17(20)-dien-3beta,16alpha-diyl-diacetate, 17,17-ethylendioxyandrostan-5,15-dien-3beta-ol and 3beta-hydroxypregn-17(20)-en-16-one had higher SI values than ribavirin, which was used as a reference drug. The antiviral mode of action of DHEA was also investigated against VSV replication in Vero cells, and time of addition experiments showed that DHEA mainly affected a late event in the virus growth cycle. Analysis of RNA and protein synthesis indicated that DHEA adversely affected positive strand RNA synthesis and viral mature particle formation.
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio de Virología, Departamento de Química Biológica, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Ciudad Universitaria, Pabellón 2, Piso 4, C1428EGA, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
authors.forename: Carina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Romanutti
authors.forename: Andrea C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Bruttomesso
authors.forename: Viviana
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Castilla
authors.forename: Juan A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Bisceglia
authors.forename: Lydia R
authors.initials: LR
authors.lastname: Galagovsky
authors.forename: Mónica B
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Wachsman
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000998:Antiviral Agents / Q000494:pharmacology*; D002522:Chlorocebus aethiops; D003687:Dehydroepiandrosterone / Q000031:analogs & derivatives* / Q000494:pharmacology*; D019084:Fluorescent Antibody Technique, Indirect; D012367:RNA, Viral / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D014709:Vero Cells; D054243:Vesicular Stomatitis / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000821:virology; D018116:Vesiculovirus / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000235:genetics / Q000254:growth & development; D014779:Virus Replication / Q000187:drug effects
chemical_list: D000998:Antiviral Agents; D012367:RNA, Viral; D003687:Dehydroepiandrosterone