Effects of bovine lactoferrin on in vitro replication of feline herpesvirus

Abstract

Bovine lactoferrin has a notable inhibitory effect on the in vitro replication of FHV-1 prior to and during, but not following viral adsorption. These findings strongly suggest that lactoferrin inhibits FHV-1 adsorption to the cell surface and/or penetration of the virus into the cell. Clinical effects of topical lactoferrin in acute or recrudescent herpetic episodes in cats warrant investigation.

Felid Herpesvirus Type 1 Infection in Cats: A Natural Host Model for Alphaherpesvirus Pathogenesis

“…It has been shown [43] to inhibit FeHV-1 replication in vitro, potentially as a result of interfering with the binding of FeHV-1 binding to its cellular receptor and/or viral penetration into susceptible cells. …”

Antiviral properties of milk proteins and peptides

“…Similar to the action against HIV, the antiviral effect of LF occurs in the early phase of HSV-infection, with LF inhibiting the adsorption of virus to the target cells by binding to virus particles (Hasegawa et al, 1994;Marchetti et al, 1996). In addition, bLF inhibits the in vitro infection by feline herpesvirus (FHV-1) prior to and during viral adsorption (Beaumont, Maggs, & Clarke, 2003). Bovine LF and its apo-and holo-forms, as well as hLF, were effective against canine herpesvirus (CHV) with the same mechanism as that of HSV (Tanaka et al, 2003).…”

Anti herpes simplex virus activity of lactoferrin/lactoferricin – an example of antiviral activity of antimicrobial protein/peptide

“…Several immunological functions have been ascribed to Lf, although their detailed mechanisms remain unknown [68][69][70][71][72][73]. Lf has also been shown to inhibit tumor growth [74], fungal infections [75][76] as well as viral infections [77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89]. The antiviral activity of Lf has been demonstrated against both naked [87,[90][91][92] and enveloped viruses [79,81,[84][85][86][93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100].…”

“…Interaction between Lf and the host cell inhibits infection by hepatitis B virus (HBV) and HSV [80,55]. In contrast, for infections with adenovirus, feline herpes virus (FHV-1), hepatitis C virus (HCV) and human immunodefi ciency virus (HIV) infection, Lf exerts its antiviral activity by direct interaction with the viral particle [77,96,[103][104]. In all cases studied, it appears that Lf exhibits its antiviral activity at an early phase in the infection process [55, 77-78, 80, 83, 96, 103-105].…”