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Evaluation of cytotoxicity of ‘anti-diabetic’ herbal preparation and five medicinal plants: an Allium cepa assay

2018; University of Niš; Volume: 8; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

2217-4605

Višnja Madić, Jelena Jovanović, Aleksandar Stojilković, Marina Jušković, Perica Vasiljević,

Genomics, phytochemicals, and oxidative stress

Traditional medicine is often used as the treatment for Diabetes Mellitus, but little is known about potential toxicity of medicinal plants used for this purposes. The cytotoxic effect of aqueous extracts of a traditional ‘anti-diabetic’ herbal preparation, as well as its constituents: Rubus fruticosus , Vaccinium myrtillus , Potentilla erecta , Geum urbanum and Phaseolus vulgaris was evaluated using the Allium cepa assay. Onion bulbs were exposed to 400 μg/ml, 800 μg/ml and 1200 μg/ml concentrations of each extract. There was concentration dependent inhibition of root growth by the extracts when compared with the control. All the tested extracts had mitodepressive effect on cell division. ‘Anti-diabetic’ herbal mixture (1200 µg/ml) and V. myrtillus (400 µg/ml) caused surprisingly high prophase accumulation. These events manifested the cytotoxic effect of this herbal preparation as well as all the tested medicinal plants at some of the tested concentrations.