IN VIVO - ACUTE ORAL TOXICITY STUDY OF RAS SINDOOR IN ALBINO RATS

Mogal Bhushan B.* and Patkar Abhay H.

ABSTRACT

Ras sindoor is a mercury based Ayurvedic herbo-mineral preparation widely used very effectively in the treatment of different diseases. Regarding its safety, previous researchers did Acute and Chronic toxicity study only on self prepared Ras sindoor. But in society, people consume Ras sindoor as a therapeutic medicine available in market which is prepared by different pharmaceutical companies. Therefore, this investigation is an attempt to perform acute oral toxicity evaluation of marketed Ras sindoor sample Agad-B having maximum mercury percentage among three different reputed market samples of Ras sindoor to find out any adverse effect and to estimate the LD50 in albino rats by following OECD 423 guidelines. Body weight, clinical or toxicological signs & symptoms and changes observed in internal organs at necropsy were studied after administration of Ras sindoor sample Agad-B stepwise in the dose of 300 mg/kg and 2000mg/kg. Ras sindoor sample Agad-B was found to be safe as all study animals were survived for 14 days without producing any adverse effect and sign of toxicity up to an oral dose of 2000 mg/kg. Hence the LD50 of Ras sindoor sample Agad- B could be more than 2000 mg/kg body weight in the albino rats and thereby in human beings and is classified in Globally Harmonized Classification System (GHS) Category 5. This level of LD50 value shows that marketed Ras sindoor may not likely to produce pathological alterations at the therapeutic doses when administered in human beings for various clinical conditions.

Keywords: Ras sindoor, Acute oral toxicity, LD50, OECD 423.