Kerben MJ, Kang LC; American Society for Microbiology. General Meeting.
Abstr Gen Meet Am Soc Microbiol. 1998 May 17-21; 98: 50 (abstract no. A-72).
Univ. of South Florida, Tampa, USA.
Combinational drug therapy is on the forefront of treatment for AIDS. Immunomodulators in conjunction with anti-viral drugs may be a more effective method of treating the retroviral infection and restricting the progression of disease, than using AZT alone. To examine these effects, AZT was used in combination with methionine enkephalin (Met-Enk) in an in vitro focus forming assay, using Mus dunni cells infected with the Friend leukemia virus (FLV) and supplemented with spleen cells from BALB/c mice. Previous studies have shown that Met-Enk acts only in the presence of spleen cells. AZT used at 0.2 ng/ml inhibited viral replication by about 50%, while when used in the presence of Met-Enk (molar concentration of 1 x 10-4), viral replication decreased by about 70%. This suggests that immunomodulators used in combination with antiviral drugs are more effective at treating FLV disease. To study the mechanism of action of Met-Enk, naloxone, a general opioid antagonist, was used at twice the molar concentration of the Met-Enk. The viral inhibition due to Met-Enk was not affected when the Mus dunni cells were pretreated with naloxone. This suggests that the action of Met-Enk may not be a receptor-mediated phenomenon.
Publication Types:
Keywords:
- Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
- Animals
- Antiviral Agents
- Enkephalin, Methionine
- Friend murine leukemia virus
- In Vitro
- Mice
- Mice, Inbred BALB C
- Mice, Inbred C57BL
- Muridae
- Naloxone
- Retroviridae Infections
- Spleen
- Zidovudine
Other ID:
UI: 102226427
From Meeting Abstracts