Abstract
Rheum ribes is a perennial herbaceous plant belonging to the Polygonaceae family that grows more in rocky and gravelly slopes in high altitude areas of Levant and Turkey. Rheum ribes is consumed as food and widely used in folk medicine against nausea, constipation and for different diseases including diabetesand hypertension. Unfortunately, the researches on Rheum ribes toxicity are insufficient. In our study, human hepatocellular carcinoma (HepG2) cell line was used in cytotoxicity evaluation of Rheum ribes water, methanol and chloroform extracts by MTT and NRU test. Comet assay was used to investigate the genotoxicity potentials of the plant extracts. Our results show that all extracts cause cell death in a concentration dependent manner at 5-50 mg/mL concentrations. The IC50 values are 14.29- 31.94 mg/mL by MTT and 21.15 - 27.66 mg/mL by NRU assay. The highest concentration (25 mg/mL) of methanol extract causes a significant DNA damage (8.7-folds). In conclusion, similar to a lot of plants used in the folk medicine the risk of Rheum ribes is still unknown. The uncontrolled use of this plant could harm to the patients. Our results indicate possible cyto- and gentoxicity effects of Rheum ribes, these results should rise the concerns about the safety of Rheum ribes and other folk herbs. Cite this article as : Abudayyak M (2019). In vitro evaluation of Rheum ribes induced genotoxicity in HepG2 cell lines. Istanbul J Pharm 10.26650/IstanbulJPharm.2019.19021.
Highlights
Mankind has been discovering the therapeutic power of plants and benefiting from the herbal power to survive and fight diseases since ancient times
Sardari et al (2009) evaluated the cytotoxic effect of ethanol extracts of the herb Rheum ribes in different cell lines by MTT test, with the results showing IC50 values ranging between 11.2-67.96 mg/mL
Esmaeilbeig et al (2015) evaluated the anti-cancer effect of different Rheum ribes extracts against tumor cells using MTT cytotoxicity assay – the results showed that IC50 was115 μg/mL in human blood (K562) cell line while 200 μg/mL concentration caused less than a 15% decrease in the viability of Hela cells
Summary
Mankind has been discovering the therapeutic power of plants and benefiting from the herbal power to survive and fight diseases since ancient times. More than 80% of the population still use traditional medical plants as the first choice in the treatment of different diseases. About 80% of the world’s population is thought to be living in developing countries; which means that about 64% of the world’s population uses herbal remedies (Farnsworth et al, 1990). Approximately 25% of the drugs sold by prescription in developed countries are herb-derived chemicals (Principe et al, 1991). In developed countries a new wave of “back to nature” has affected individuals and communities leading to an increased interest in alternative medicine causing increases in the use of herbal medicines. The high costs of pharmaceutical and health protection products are pushing a large part of the population of developing countries towards choosing traditional remedies in the treatment of their disease(Verschaeve et al, 2004)
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