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Abstract
Euphorbia tirucalli (L.), commonly known as aveloz, has been indiscriminately used in popular medicine to treat various illnesses. However, some components can have devastating consequences. Injury to a cell's genetic material can cause mutations, cancer, and cell death. Our main goal in this work was to evaluate the genotoxic and cytotoxic effects of E. tirucalli extract on human leukocytes. For this purpose, we performed a phytochemical analysis to evaluate the plant's components. In the second step, we treated cultured human leukocytes with different concentrations of the dry extract of the plant and then evaluated the oxidative and genotoxic profiles of these leukocytes. We found that at 1% and 10% concentrations, the aveloz extract acted as a genotoxic agent that could damage DNA and increase oxidative damage. We conclude that despite its popular use, aveloz can act as a genotoxic agent, especially when it contains phorbol ester. Aveloz's indiscriminate use might actually promote tumors and therefore carry a considerable genetic risk for its users.
Highlights
Three-quarters of the world’s population use plants as a source for substances with pharmacological and therapeutic properties primarily to treat diseases and maintain health
Euphorbia tirucalli (L.), popularly known as pencil tree, dog’s stick, or aveloz, is a plant indigenous to Africa but well adapted in Brazil that has been indiscriminately used in popular medicine to treat various illnesses and conditions, including snake bites, asthma, and muscle spasms (Valadares et al 2006)
Stock solutions of reference standards were prepared in the high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) mobile phase for quercetin, rutin, and kaempferol at 0.020–0.200 mg/mL and for gallic, caffeic, and chlorogenic acids at 0.050–0.250 mg/ mL
Summary
Three-quarters of the world’s population use plants as a source for substances with pharmacological and therapeutic properties primarily to treat diseases and maintain health. The total polyphenol concentration in the crude extract was measured spectrophotometrically using a modified Folin-Ciocalteau method (Chandra and Gonzalez de Mejia 2004). The total condensed tannin concentrations in crude extract was measured spectrophotometrically using the modified vanillin method (Morrison et al 1995).
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