INVIVO AND INVITRO SAFETY EVALUATION OF CARICA PAPAYA LEAF EXTRACT FOR POTENTIAL THERAPEUTIC APPLICATION

Jaymesh Thadani, Bhavya Barot and Sunita Salunke*

ABSTRACT

Carica papaya Leaf Extract (CPLE) has emerged as a promising Phyto therapeutic agent for dengue. However, its potential toxic effects still remains weakly understood. The current study aims at toxicity assessment of CPLE. For acute toxicity, maximum dose of 1000 mg/kgBW was given to female wistar rats. Furthermore, for the sub-chronic toxicity test 24 rats were divided in four group (n=6) and were given dose of 1000mg/kg BW, 100mg/kg BW and 10 mg/kg BW respectively, fourth group served as control. Results indicated that there was no obvious effect at tested doses during the test period. The study showed that oral administration of CPLE had no alteration in serum biochemistry as well as histo-pathology of vital organs in acute as well as sub-chronic toxicity studies. The in vitro study indicated that there was no effect of CPLE on cell viability of HepG2 when treated with various concentrations from 5μg/ml to 640μg/ml. Further there was no abnormal ROS generation in HepG2 cells with respect to control. Levels of IL-6 in cell supernatant showed marked time dependent increase which may be correlated with increased thrombopoietin production in HepG2. Thus HepG2 cells did not show any sign of toxicity and CPLE did not cause apparent lethal alterations to HepG2 cells. Taken together, our results provide a useful evaluation for the use of CPLE as the Phyto therapeutic agent against Dengue and other platelet disorders.

Keywords: Acute Toxicity, Subchronic toxicity, Carica papaya, MTT DCFDA, IL-6.