Although it has been known that γδ T cells may play an important role in the immune response to infection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tb), the mechanisms by which the γδ T cells participate in the innate and/or acquired immunity to tuberculosis (TB) have not been full elucidated. In the present study, 27 patients with active pulmonary TB and 16 healthy donors (HD) were performed. We found that proportion of IL-17-producing cells among lymphocyte was similar between TB patients and HD, whereas the proportions of γδ T cells in IL-17-producing cells (59.2%) and IL-17-producing cells in γδ T cells (19.4%) in peripheral blood were markedly increased in TB patients when compared to those in HD (43.9% and 7.7%, respectively). In addition, the proportions of IFN-γ-producing γδ T cells in TB patients were obviously lower than that in HD. Upon re-stimulated with M. tb heat-treated antigen (M. tb-HAg) in vitro, fewer IL-17-producing γδ T cells were generated from HD and TB patients, whereas IFN-γ-producing γδ T cells were increased in TB patients compared to that in HD. Our findings in TB patients and healthy human were consistent with other murine investigation that the IL-17-producing γδ T cells were main source of IL-17 in mouse model of BCG infection, suggesting that γδ T cells might be involved in the formation of tubercular granuloma in pulmonary TB patients, but need further identification.

To complement traditional antivirals, natural compounds that act via host targets and present high barriers to resistance are of increasing interest. In the work reported here, we detected that homoharringtonine (HHT) presents effective antiviral activity. HHT completely inhibited infections of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), Newcastle disease virus (NDV), and porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) at concentrations of 50, 100, and 500 nM in cell cultures, respectively. Treatment with HHT at doses of 0.05 or 0.2 mg/kg significantly reduced viral load and relieved severe symptoms in PEDV- or NDV-infected animals. HHT treatment, however, moderately inhibited avian influenza virus (AIV) infection, suggesting its potent antiviral action is restricted to a number of classes of RNA viruses. In this study, we also observed that HHT actively inhibited herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) replication with a 50% inhibitory concentration (IC50) of 139 nM; the treatment with HHT at 1000 nM led to reductions of three orders of magnitude. Moreover, HHT antagonized the phosphorylation level of endogenous and exogenous eukaryotic initiation factor 4E (p-eIF4E), which might regulate the selective translation of specific messenger RNA (mRNA). HHT provides a starting point for further progress toward the clinical development of broad-spectrum antivirals.