Hepatoprotective Effect of Carob Pods Extract (Ceratonia siliqua L.) against Cyclophosphamide Induced Alterations in Rats

Abstract

Drugs used for treatment of cancerous diseases by mean of chemotherapy are often limited due to their severe undesirable side effects in multiple organs. Cyclophosphamide (CYP) belongs to class of the cytotoxic bifunctional alkylating agents. In the current study, it was revealed that CYP caused significant (P˂0.05) elevation in levels of different biochemical measurements. Carob extract exhibited beneficial effect through lowering of all elevated parameters. Furthermore, CYP caused decline in total antioxidant capacity (TAC) level in association with elevation of lipid peroxidation (LPO) level and significantly (P˂0.05) in liver tissue. Carob extract restored TAC and lowered LPO level. CYP caused several histopathological alterations in the hepatocytes and carob extract minimized severity of these alterations. The similarity index percent (SI %) in the native electrophoretic protein, lipoprotein and calcium moiety of protein patterns was represented by lowest values (87.50, 66.67 and 70.59, respectively) with the CYP-treated group. The SI % values increased in all carob treated groups. In all electrophoretic isoenzymes, the SI % value was represented by the lowest value (60.00, 66.67, 66.67 and 53.33 respectively with catalase (CAT), peroxidase (GPx), α- and β-esterase (EST) patterns) in CYP-treated group. While in all carob treated groups, the SI % value reached the highest value (100.00). Furthermore, CYP induced cleavage of the genomic DNA and the carob extract maintained the DNA integrity. The study concluded that carob showed ameliorative effect against alterations induced by CYP at biochemical, histopathological and molecular levels in liver tissue of rats.