HIV and the Role of Various Medicinal Plants Against Infection in Humans, with Possible Mechanism of Action and Functions of Secondary Metabolites

Medicinal plants are always acceptable for their activity towards different disease targets as they contain various extractable chemical constituents and bioactive metabolites. Plant products have been showing their unexpected activities towards different point of our life since the very first day of civilization. During metabolism process, plants produce different chemical compounds including different secondary metabolites that are not involved in the direct growth or development of the plant but in protection of the plant from different outside as well as inside enemies. Those secondary metabolites such as polyphenols, alkaloids, flavonoids, tannins, sapogenins are having different biological activities towards different diseases conditions in human body. Hundreds of secondary metabolites from different plants have been tested preclinically as well as clinically and gave excellent action against different disease such as inflammation, diabetic, carcinogenesis, depression, cytotoxicity, hepatotoxicity, microbial infection including viral infections as HIV. This chapter is mainly focused on different activities of different secondary metabolites and their mechanism of actions in different stages of the life cycle of HIV and its infection in human body including some reported compounds with potent activity. Papaverine, Apocynin, Taxifolin, Mangiferin, Genomycin I including Calanolide A, Suksdorfin, Bevirimat, etc. are well-known compounds from different natural sources that showed very potent activities in different conditions of HIV infection.