THE HEPATOPROTECTIVE EFFECTS OF WHOLE PLANT EXTRACTS OF OCIMUM BASILICUM IN EXPERIMENTALLY INDUCED LIVER DAMAGE IN RATS

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The liver plays a central role in the metabolism of various endogenous and exogenous substances. This therefore exposes the liver to all kinds of insults produced by many materials including drugs, plants, domestic and industrial chemicals. More than 900 drugs have been implicated with liver injury. There are few medications mentioned to have ameliorating effects on liver damage. However some medicinal plants are reported to have hepatoprotective effects on liver damage.Ocimum basilicum of the plant family Lamiaceae is widely cultivated as a nourishing food and traditionally used as an antispasmodic, aromatic, digestive, carminative, stomachic, antinephrotoxic and tonic agent. This study was conducted to evaluate the antioxidant and hepatoprotective activity of Ocimum basilicum whole plant extracts using acetaminophen induced liver damage in rats as an experimental procedure using silymarin (100mg/kg) as a reference agent.Dried homogenized whole plant of O. basilicum was subjected to gradient extraction using chloroform, diethyl ether, ethyl acetate and methanol and the extracts obtained from these tested for hepatoprotective activity by pre‐treating groups of rats with different dosages for 7days before inducing liver damage with acetaminophen at 750mg/kg on the eight day. Liver function test was conducted by determining levels of serum liver enzymes as aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), total bilirubin, blood urea nitrogen (BUN), total protein and histological studies. The solvent extract with the highest bioactivity was further subject to vacuum liquid chromatography (VLC) and the fractions assayed for their antioxidant properties using DPPH radical scavenging and the ferric reducing antioxidant power assay (FRAP) procedures with ascorbic acid as standard.Results showed that all the solvent extracts significantly reduced (P<0.05) the levels of the serum enzymes AST, ALT, and ALP with significant reduction (P<0.05) also in BUN, total protein and total bilirubin when compared with silymarin. However the highest reduction was seen with the methanol extract with the experimental rats manifesting only few histopathological changes in their liver compared with those of the rats pre‐treated with the other solvents. The VLC fractions from the methanolic extract produced significant DPPH and FRAP activities when compared with that of ascorbic acid.The results of the studies suggest that the plant Osimum basilicum may have hepatoprotective with antioxidant activities and supports the folkloric medicinal use of the plant in handling some diseases.