Pharmacognosy Research logo
Submit
Pharmacognosy ResearchACADEMIC PUBLISHING
Article

Acute toxicity impacts of Euphorbia hirta L extract on behavior, organs body weight index and histopathology of organs of the mice and Artemia salina

1, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2★★ Corresponding author

  1. 1Biology Division, School of Distance Education
  2. 2Institute for Research in Molecular Medicine (INFORMM), Universiti Sains Malaysia, USM, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia

CORRESPONDENCE

Sreenivasan Sasidharan

Institute for Research in Molecular Medicine (INFORMM), Universiti Sains Malaysia, USM, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia

srisasidharan@yahoo.com

Volume 4, Issue 3 · pp. 170-177 · 2012 · DOI: 10.4103/0974-8490.99085

ABSTRACT

The methanol extract of Euphorbia hirta L (Euphorbiaceae), which is used in traditional medicines, was tested for in vivo toxicity. In vivo brine shrimp lethality assay and oral acute toxicity study at single high dose of 5000 mg/kg and observation for 14 days in mice were used to study the toxic effect of E. hirta. Brine shrimp lethality assay was used to calculate the median lethal concentration (LC50) of E. hirta (for leaves, stems, flowers and roots) methanolic extracts at concentrations from 100 to 0.07 mg/ml. The LC50 values of 1.589, 1.420, 0.206 and 0.0827 mg/ml were obtained for stems, leaves, flowers and roots, respectively. Potassium dichromate (the positive control) had LC50 value of 0.00758 mg/ml. The acute oral toxicity study of the leaf extract resulted in one third mortality and mild behavioral changes among the treated mice. No significant statistical differences found between body weight, relative (%) and absolute (g) organ weights of treated and untreated groups (P> 0.05). Gross and microscopic examination of the vital organ tissues revealed no differences between control and treated mice. All the tissues appeared normal. E. hirta leaves methanol extract has exhibited mild toxic effects in mice.

KEYWORDS

Open in new tab

REFERENCES

As published

Showing references and in-text citations exactly as published.

    Cite this article

    SELECT FORMAT

    Rajeh, M. A. B., Kwan, Y. P., Zakaria, Z., Latha, L. Y., Jothy, S. L., & Sasidharan, S. (2012). Acute toxicity impacts of Euphorbia hirta L extract on behavior, organs body weight index and histopathology of organs of the mice and Artemia salina. Pharmacognosy Research, 4(3), 170-177. https://doi.org/10.4103/0974-8490.99085

    Copyright and licence

    © 2012 Author(s)

    This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0