Natural hyperoside extracted from hawthorn exhibits antiviral activity against porcine epidemic diarrhea virus in vitro and in vivo

Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) causes severe diarrhea and death in piglets, resulting in significant economic losses for the pork industry. There is an urgent need for new treatment strategies. Here, we focused on optimizing the process of purifying natural hyperoside (nHYP) from hawthorn and evaluating its effectiveness against PEDV both in vitro and in vivo. Our findings demonstrated that nHYP with a purity >98% was successfully isolated from hawthorn with an extraction rate of 0.42 mg/g. Furthermore, nHYP exhibited strong inhibitory effects on PEDV replication in cells, with a selection index of 9.72. nHYP significantly reduced the viral load in the intestines of piglets and protected three of four piglets from death caused by PEDV infection. Mechanistically, nHYP could intervene in the interaction of PEDV N protein and p53. The findings implicate nHYP as having promising therapeutic potential for combating PEDV infections.