Abstract

Ekybion is a drug complex of 16 natural extracts and inorganic compounds designed to treat a variety of respiratory pathogens of bacterial and viral origin. It is licensed throughout Europe for the treatment of respiratory tract infections from equine parainfluenza type 3 and equine herpes virus type 1 in equine stables. The purpose of this paper was to test the efficacy of Ekybion on a well-developed animal model of influenza A infection and determine a mode of action. Experiments were performed with Balb/c mice infected with a lethal dose of influenza A/PR/8/34 H1N1 virus and treated with nebulized Ekybion every 8h in a time-dependant or dose-dependant fashion. These experiments showed that mice treated prior to infection with Ekybion had a higher survival rates (∼46) compared with untreated animals (∼0). Paradoxically, these mice showed no significant difference in lung virus titer or weight loss. There was, however, a decrease in the level of GM-CSF, IL-6, and G-CSF cytokines in the lungs of Ekybion-treated, infected mice. It is possible that decreases in proinflammatory cytokines may have contributed to increased survivorship in Ekybion-treated influenza-infected mice.

Document Type

Article

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1155/2011/192079

Rights Information

© 2011 The authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Publication Date

1-1-2011

Journal Title

Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine

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