Evaluation of In Ovo Antiviral Activities of Medicinal Flowers against Newcastle Disease Virus and Avian Influenza Virus

In Pakistan, the poultry industry is one of the rapidly growing industries. Due to lack of biosecurity measures, this is affected by some important infectious agents such as Avian Influenza virus (H9N2) and Newcastle disease virus (NDV) results in a huge economic loss. So, to control these losses discovery of new anti-viral drugs required to bring into line to fight against these infections. It is a general perception that the active components of medicinal plants have effective results against various infections like the influenza virus. The current therapeutic facilities need to be improved by investigating new antiviral drugs from natural resources to fight against viral infections. The present study was conducted on ethanolic extracts of seven different flowers to examine their antiviral activity against NDV and H9N2 in ovo using chicken embryonated egg inoculation. The spot agglutination and hemagglutination tests showed inhibitory effects of Rosa damascena Miller, Achillea millefolium, Woodfordia fruticosa Kurtz and Bombax ceiba L. against NDV as no agglutination observed. While the extracts of Taxacum officianale Weber, Hyssopus officianalis L. and Chrysanthemum cinerafolium (Trevis.) Vis. showed positive results for both spot agglutination and hemagglutination assay against NDV. However, both spot agglutination and hemagglutination assay showed inhibitory effect of all the flowers extracts against H9N2. The bioactive components such as alkaloids, ethers, terpenoids, etc. of each flower were analyzed through Gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The current results revealed that ethanolic extracts of these flowers possess strong antiviral activity because of their active ingredients. These ingredients should be isolated, commercialized and used for therapeutic purpose. © 2021 Friends Science Publishers