BACKGROUND A great effort has been made to develop efficacious antiviral drugs, but many viral infections are still lack of efficient antiviral therapies so far. The related exploration of natural products to fight viruses has been raised in recent years. Natural compounds with structural diversity and complexity offer a great chance to find new antiviral agents. Particularly, phenolic acids have attracted considerable attention owing to their potent antiviral abilities and unique mechanisms. The aim of this review is to report new discoveries and updates pertaining to antiviral phenolic acids. METHODS The relevant references on natural phenolic acids were searched. The antiviral phenolic acids were classified according to their structural properties and antiviral types. Meanwhile, the antiviral characteristics and structure-activity relationships of phenolic acids and their derivatives were summarized. RESULTS The review finds that natural phenolic acids and their derivatives possessed potent inhibitory effects on multiple virus in humans such as human immunodeficiency virus, hepatitis C virus, hepatitis B virus, herpes simplex virus, influenza virus and respiratory syncytial virus. In particular, caffeic acid/gallic acid and their derivatives exhibited outstanding antiviral properties by a variety of modes of action. CONCLUSION Naturally derived phenolic acids especially caffeic acid/gallic acid and their derivatives may be regarded as novel promising antiviral leads or candidates. Additionally, scarcely any of these compounds has been used as antiviral treatment in clinical practice. Therefore, these phenolic acids with diverse skeletons and mechanisms provide us an excellent resource for finding novel antiviral drugs.

中文翻译：

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天然来源的酚酸及其衍生物对抗人类病毒感染的结构性质和作用机理。

背景技术已经做出巨大努力来开发有效的抗病毒药物，但是到目前为止，许多病毒感染仍然缺乏有效的抗病毒治疗。近年来已经提出了有关天然产物以对抗病毒的探索。具有结构多样性和复杂性的天然化合物为寻找新的抗病毒药物提供了很大的机会。特别地，酚酸由于其强大的抗病毒能力和独特的机理而引起了极大的关注。这篇综述的目的是报告与抗病毒酚酸有关的新发现和更新。方法检索有关天然酚酸的相关参考文献。抗病毒酚酸根据其结构性质和抗病毒类型进行分类。同时，总结了酚酸及其衍生物的抗病毒特性和构效关系。结果审查发现，天然酚酸及其衍生物对人类多种病毒具有有效的抑制作用，例如人类免疫缺陷病毒，丙型肝炎病毒，乙型肝炎病毒，单纯疱疹病毒，流感病毒和呼吸道合胞病毒。特别地，咖啡酸/没食子酸及其衍生物通过多种作用方式表现出优异的抗病毒特性。结论天然衍生的酚酸，尤其是咖啡酸/没食子酸及其衍生物可被视为新的有希望的抗病毒药物或候选药物。另外，在临床实践中几乎没有这些化合物中的任何一种被用作抗病毒治疗。所以，