الكاتب: Multiple References

We would like to add a brief comment on the topic of antimicrobial activity of local anaesthetics after the publication of an excellent review (Cederlund & Mardh, 1993) and the subsequent letter to the Editor (de Clari 1994). Only antibacterial activity of local anaesthetics is mentioned by these authors, while we have tested in vitro the antiviral action of these drugs against Herpes simplex 1 (HSV-1) with interesting results. We have performed the "plaque neutralization test" against HSV-1 in Vero cells. We tested, for each drug, solutions at different concentrations: 0.25% and 0.5% bupivacaine with and without adrenaline, hypertonic 1% bupivacaine, 2% mepivacaine, 1% mepivacaine with adrenaline, 1% and 2% lignocaine and 5% hypertonic lignocaine. Our results showed that intermediate-potency anaesthetics like mepivacaine can inhibit viral replication by up to 50% but only with concentrated solutions (more than 1%) and with adrenaline. With more powerful anaesthetics such as bupivacaine the inhibiting activity is present even with 0.5% solutions but, again, without adrenaline