Abstract
Context: Camel milk (CM) is recommended for liver disease patients in Egypt for a strong belief that it has a curative effect.Objective: The effect of consumption of CM with or without chemotherapeutic drug cisplatin was evaluated on induced hepatocarcinogenesis in rats.Materials and methods: Wistar male rats (56) were divided into eight groups (7 rats each). Group I was control. Hepatocarcinogenesis was initiated by a single dose of intraperitoneal injection of diethylnitrosamine (DENA) (200 mg/kg BW) and promoted by phenobarbitone (500 ppm) in drinking water in groups V, VI, VII and VIII. Treatment started from 28th till 38th week using CM (5 mL/day) and/or cisplatin (5 mg/kg/3 weeks) in groups II, III IV, VI, VII and VIII. Biochemical analysis, lipid peroxidation and superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity in liver tissue were performed. Histopathology of liver and kidney and immunohistochemistry of placental glutathione-S-transferase (P-GST) in liver were performed and analyzed using image analysis.Results: Albumin concentration and SOD activity were 3.13 ± 0.23 and 311.45 ± 41.71 in group VII (DENA & cisplatin), whereas they were 4.3 ± 0.15 and 540.5 ± 29.94 in group VII (DENA, CM and cisplatin). The mean area of altered hepatocellular foci and P-GST altered foci decreased in group VI (DENA and CM) (1049.6 ± 174.78 and 829.1 ± 261) and group VIII (cisplatin and CM) (1615.12 ± 436 and 543.9 ± 127) compared to group V (DENA only) (4173.74 ± 510.7 and 3169.49 ± 538.61). Cisplatin caused chronic interstitial nephritis, which was slightly alleviated in group VIII (CM and cisplatin).Conclusions: CM had an antioxidant effect and together with cisplatin managed to decrease hepatocarcinogenesis.
Highlights
Primary liver cancer, known as hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), is a disease with an extremely poor prognosis and a 5year survival rate below 9% (Sherman 2005)
At the 34th week, albumin significantly decreased in group VII injected with DENA and treated with cisplatin compared to other groups and was decreased in group III injected with cisplatin but showed no significance
The AST activity was increased in group VIII injected with DENA and treated with camel milk and cisplatin compared to other groups except group VI injected with DENA and treated with Camel’s milk (CM)
Summary
Known as hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), is a disease with an extremely poor prognosis and a 5year survival rate below 9% (Sherman 2005). Camel’s milk (CM) is an excellent source of well-balanced nutrients (Gorban & Izzeldin 2001) and exhibits a wide range of biological activities; antimicrobial, antioxidative, antithrombotic, antihypertensive and immuno-modulatory effect (FitzGerald & Meisel 2000; Kohonen & Pihlanto 2003; Saltanat et al 2009). These biological activities are mainly due to the presence of peptides and protein in milk (Kohonen & Pihlanto 2001). This study assesses the effect of consuming camel milk either alone or combined with cisplatin against hepatic cancer
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