Abstract
BackgroundEchinops kebericho is widely used for treatment of a variety of diseases including infectious, non-infectious disease and fumigation during child birth. Antibacterial, antimalarial, anti-leshimania, anti-diarrheal and insect repellent activities have been elucidated. Its toxicity profile is not yet investigated and thus this study was to investigate acute and sub-acute toxicity of E. kebericho decoctions.MethodsAcute toxicity study was performed in female Wistar albino rats with single oral dose and followed up to 14 days. The sub-acute oral dose toxicity studies were conducted in rats of both sexes in accordance with the repeated dose 28-day oral toxicity study in rodent OECD guidelines. Physical observations were made regularly during the study period while body weight was measured weekly. Organ weight, histopathology, clinical chemistry and hematology data were collected on the 29th day. Results were presented as mean ± standard deviation. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed if assumptions were met; otherwise Kruskal-Wallis analysis was performed.ResultOral administration of E. kebericho decoction showed no treatment-related mortality in female rats up to the dose of 5000 mg/kg. In sub-acute toxicity studies, no significant treatment-related abnormalities were observed compared to negative controls. Food consumption, body weight, organ weight, hematology, clinical chemistry, and histopathology did not show significant variation between controls and treatment groups. However, creatinine, relative lung weight, triglycerides, and monocytes were lower in treated compared to control groups. Significant variations between male and female groups in food consumption, relative organ weight, hematology, clinical chemistry were observed. Histolo-pathology of high-dose treated groups showed fatty liver.ConclusionEchinops kebericho showed LD50 of greater than 5000 mg/kg in acute toxicity study and is well tolerated up to the dose of 600 mg/kg body weight in sub-acute toxicity study.
Highlights
Echinops kebericho is widely used for treatment of a variety of diseases including infectious, noninfectious disease and fumigation during child birth
There was a higher drop in body weight of those treated with 5000 mg/kg during the first day of treatment compared to either 300 mg/kg or 2000 mg/kg
The 28 day repeated dose toxicity study revealed that E. kebericho did not show significant alterations in hematology, clinical chemistry, or derangements in histology up to 600 mg/ kg/day compared to controls
Summary
Echinops kebericho is widely used for treatment of a variety of diseases including infectious, noninfectious disease and fumigation during child birth. Medicinal plants have played significant roles in the treatment of diseases traditionally and in the development of modern drugs [1]. The use of herbal medicines and its supplements is globally increasing tremendously [2] and about 80% of the world population rely on it for some part of their primary healthcare [3]. Tremendous attention is being given to herbal medicines due to limitation of modern medicine. Ethiopia has a long tradition of herbal medicine use on which most of the populations rely partly for their primary health care [5]. Echinops kebericho Mesfin (Family: Asteraceae) is among the many commonly used endemic. Echinops kebericho is an erect perennial herb or bush, commonly forming a massive root stock with grassy stems [7,8,9]. Various in vitro and in vivo studies have confirmed the ethnopharmacological claims [10, 11, 14, 15]
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