Current work and future possibilities for the management of severe influenza: using immunomodulatory agents that target the host response

Mechanisms of action and efficacy of statins against influenza

The influenza virus (IV) is known to be a resistant virus with frequent mutations, causing severe respiratory diseases in the upper respiratory system. Public health concerns about clinical efficacy of all conventional drugs are ambiguous; therefore, finding additional therapeutic agents is critical to prevent and control influenza outbreaks. Influenza is associated with the induction of proinflammatory cytokines. Scientists have reported that anti-inflammatory drugs, with pleiotropic effects, reduce the burden of severe influenza diseases. Therefore, statins, which are cardioprotective drugs with anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory effects, may help patients suffering from influenza virus (IV). This review delineates the potential use of statins as an alternative therapy in treating influenza related illness.

Systems pharmacology uncovers Janus functions of botanical drugs: activation of host defense system and inhibition of influenza virus replication

Given the imminent threat of influenza pandemics and continuing emergence of new drug-resistant influenza virus strains, novel strategies for preventing and treating influenza disease are urgently needed. Herbal medicine, used for thousands of years in combinational therapies (Herb Formula), plays a significant role in stimulating the host immune system in vivo, and meanwhile, in fighting against the pandemic by directly inhibiting influenza virus in vitro. Such potential Janus functions may spark interest in therapeutic manipulation of virus diseases. Unfortunately, the molecular mechanism of the Janus functions of the medicinal herbs in the treatment of influenza remains unclear. In this work, to illustrate the therapeutic concept of Janus functions in the treatment of influenza, we have introduced a novel systems pharmacology model that integrates pharmacokinetic screening, targeting and network analysis of two representative herbs Lonicera japonica and Fructus Forsythiae that are efficient in the treatment of influenza, inflammation and other diseases. 50 Chemicals with favorable pharmacokinetic profiles have been identified for the two herbs, and the ligand-target network was constructed by complementing the literature-based experimental data deposited in DrugBank. The annotation of these chemicals was assigned using a novel drug targeting approach, and mapped to target-disease and drug-target-pathway networks. The overall data suggest that the medicinal herbs function by indirectly suppressing the virus proliferation via regulating the immune systems in hosts, and also, by directly inhibiting virus proliferation through targeting viral proteins essential for the viral life cycle. For the first time, we have demonstrated the mechanism of medicinal herbs in prevention and treatment of virus diseases via the Janus functions on a systematic level.