Amylmetacresol/2,4-dichlorobenzyl alcohol, hexylresorcinol, or carrageenan lozenges as active treatments for sore throat

Morokutti-Kurz, Martina; Graf, Christine; Prieschl-Grassauer, Eva

Local anesthetics and carrageenan as causative therapy against sore throat tested is 4-16 times higher than any achievable concentration in the mouth. Thus, we wanted to test a set of commercially available AMC/DCBA or HR containing lozenges using classical replication inhibition assays against a variety of representative respiratory viruses. We chose, as members of the picornavirus family (non-enveloped), HRV1a, HRV8, and Coxsackievirus A10, and influenza virus A H1N1n, as a representative of the orthomyxovirus family (enveloped). Additionally, we hypothesized that denatured spike proteins lose their ability to cause hemagglutination of chicken erythrocytes. Therefore, we utilized an adapted HAI assay to determine the effect of the observed morphological changes. We chose enveloped hCoV OC43 as a representative of the coronaviruses, as they were responsible for ~20% of RTIs. 3 The AMC/DCBA/HR containing lozenges were tested head to head with carrageenan containing lozenges. To allow for the different lozenges to be compared directly despite their different active ingredients, instead of the conventional half maximal inhibitory concentrations (IC 50 , in replication inhibition assays) or MIC (in HAI assay) of the specific antiviral, ID 50 or MIDs of the lozenges solutions were calculated.