Abstract
Parkia biglobosa is a medicinal plant that is used in the traditional treatment of various pathologies. The fermented seeds of this plant « néré » are used commonly in the treatment of high blood pressure. In order to establish the safety of these, acute and subacute toxicity tests were performed. For this purpose, hematological and biochemical parameters were determined in rats after repeated dosing of 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000 and 5000 mg/kg body weight (bw) of the aqueous and ethanolic extracts of the fermented seeds of P. biglobosa for 28 days. The resulting LD50 is greater than 5000 mg/kg bw and the extracts have no effect on most of the measured blood parameters. This study revealed that extracts of the fermented seeds of Parkia biglobosa are non-toxic at all doses tested and have immunostimulant and analgesic activity.
Highlights
Parkia is a pantropical genus of the family Fabaceae (Aubréville, 1950 ; Arbonnier, 2002) which includes 34 species distributed in South America (18 species), Asia (12 species) and Africa (4 species including one in Madagascar) (Hopkins, 1986 ; Luckow and Hopkins, 1995 ; Luckow, 2005)
Effect on biochemical parameters The results indicate that aqueous and ethanolic extracts do not significantly influence most biochemical parameters except creatinine and urea
The acute toxicity study revealed that gavage administration of aqueous and ethanolic extracts resulted in no mortality in animals up to the limit dose of 5000 mg/kg bw
Summary
Parkia is a pantropical genus of the family Fabaceae (Aubréville, 1950 ; Arbonnier, 2002) which includes 34 species distributed in South America (18 species), Asia (12 species) and Africa (4 species including one in Madagascar) (Hopkins, 1986 ; Luckow and Hopkins, 1995 ; Luckow, 2005). P. biglobosa is a species of this genus and is commonly used in medicine and traditional pharmacopoeia (Ouédraogo, 1995). All parts of this plant are used as a main recipe or in combination with other plants for the care of various ailments (Bonnah et al, 1998). The leaves are used to treat eye infections, skin lesions and leprosy (Erakhrumen et al, 2010). They are involved in the care of febrile states (Aubréville, 1950). The fermented seeds of P. biglobosa serve as food condiments for various peoples
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