Abstract
This aim of this study was to evaluate the whitening efficacy of the water extract from bamboo shavings (WEBS) in malignant melanoma cells (B-16) of mice. The safety of WEBS was evaluated by the acute oral toxicity test, the repeated skin irritation test and the acute eye irritation test was also evaluated. WEBS showed strong inhibitory effects against the activity of tyrosinase in B-16 cells in a dose dependent manner, and was more potent than arbutin. The melanin content was significantly inhibited by WEBS and the cytotoxicity of WEBS was lower than that of arbutin and hydroquinone. WEBS inhibited mushroom tyrosinase and the maximum was 65.05% at 16 mg/ml with an IC50 of 6 mg/ml. The LD50 was larger than 5000 mg/kg body weight and WEBS was found to be non-toxic and non-irritating. Key words: Water extract of bamboo shavings, whitening effect, B-16 melanoma cell, safety evaluation.
Highlights
The appearance of brown-spots on skin, as a consequence of hyperpigmentation, is a very common aesthetic problem (Pawaskar et al, 2007)
Value for arbutin was 68.18% at 1 mg/m, The IC50 for water extract from bamboo shavings (WEBS) and arbutin were 6 and 0.35 mg/ml, respectively. These results demonstrate that WEBS can be used as a skin-whitening agent, the tyrosinase-inhibiting ability was less in comparison with arbutin
The viability of hydroquinone treated cells declined drastically to 12% at the highest concentration. These results suggest that inhibiting B-16 proliferation may be the main reason that hydroquinone has striking whitening effect
Summary
The appearance of brown-spots on skin, as a consequence of hyperpigmentation, is a very common aesthetic problem (Pawaskar et al, 2007). The function of a large number of whitening agents is to interfere with the formation of melanin by inhibiting tyrosinase activity (Yu et al, 2007; Azhar-ul-Haq et al, 2006). B16 cells were used in this study to investigate the effect of WEBS on the proliferation rate of melanocytes, and the associated tyrosinase activity, melanin content and cytotoxicity, in order to understand the whitening mechanism from the perspective of cell level.
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