Figure 2

Inhibition of HCV protein expression, HCV RNA replication and infectious virus production by ethanol extracts of TSL, MLL, MMS and FFL. (A) Huh 7.5 cells infected with HCV J6/JFH1-P47 and treated with the extracts (30 μg/ml) of TSL, MLL, MMS and FFL (see Figure 1A) and the untreated control were subjected to Western blot analysis using monoclonal antibody against the HCV NS3 protein at 1 and 2 days post-infection (dpi). GAPDH served as an internal control to verify equal amounts of sample loading. Signal intensities of NS3 were normalized to the corresponding GAPDH signal. (B) Amounts of HCV RNA in the cells described in (A) were measured by real-time quantitative RT-PCR analysis. The HCV RNA amounts were normalized to GAPDH mRNA expression levels. Data represent means ± SEM of data from two independent experiments, and the value for the untreated control at 1 dpi was arbitrarily expressed as 1.0. *, P < 0.000001; ǂ, P < 0.001, compared with the control. (C) Virus infectivity in the culture supernatants of the cells described in (A) was measured. Data represent means ± SEM of data from two independent experiments. ǂ, P <0.05; *, P < 0.005, compared with the control. (D) Inhibition of HCV infectivity by the extracts (30 μg/ml) of TSL, MLL, MMS and FFL are shown. *, P < 0.05; ǂ, P < 0.01, compared with TSL.