Studies on Toxicological Evalution of Medicinal Plants acorus calamus and couroupita guianensis

Abstract

India has a rich history of using herbal plants as medicines for various purposes. In recent times the use of herbal medicines has increased tremendously. Though these different practical uses of various medicinally important plants are reported and used inherently from ancient times by different tribes throughout India, scientific evidence of most plants is not reported. Despite traditional uses and increasing demand for herbal medicine, one should consider that plants can also be caught up as an initiating factor in DNA damage, cell mutations, and natural toxic elements with pharmacological benefits. Therefore, the safety point of view opportunity for assessing active plant product has earned incredible importance due to the unavailability of safety data. Consequently, we have selected very popular herbal products Couroupita guianensis and Acorus calamus for this research work. Although a lot of data is available for these plants pharmacological properties, extremely limited details on toxicity and safety are available for both these plants. This study was aimed at evaluating the genotoxic and skin sensitisation potential of leaf extract of C. guianensis and rhizome extract of A. calamus for skin irritation, skin corrosion, and skin sensitisation potential, keeping in view the important facts given above. This study incorporates the evaluation of the genotoxic potential of C. guianensis leaf extract, using validated bacterial reverse mutation test (conducted using different strains of Salmonella typhimurium (As per OECD TG 471 method)) and in vivo micronucleus test (conducted using mice (As per OECD TG 474 method)). For evaluation of the skin sensitisation potential of C. guianensis, In Chemico: Direct Peptide reactivity assay (DPRA) was conducted (As per OECD TG 442C method). To evaluate the skin irritation (As per the OECD TG 439 method) and skin corrosion (As per the OECD TG 431 method) potential of A. calamus rhizome extract, internationally validated SkinEthic RhE model was used.