IN VIVO EVALUATION OF ORANGE PEEL OIL AND ITS MAJOR COMPONENT HESPERIDIN AGAINST ENTERAL PHASE OF TRICHINELLA SPIRALIS

Iman Khallaf*, Ragaa Othman, Abeer Mahmoud, Rasha Attia and Omar Tahawy

ABSTRACT

Background: Trichinellosis is widespread zoonosis for which no effective drug treatment is available at this time; anthelmintics such as albendazole are commonly used to treat human trichinellosis, although it is not fully effective. This study was carried out to assess, for the first time, the effect of orange secondary metabolites for treatment of this disease. Objective: In this study the effect of different orange peel components against enteral phase of Trichinella spiralis in mice was evaluated for the first time. This includes: orange oil prepared either by solvent extraction (OIL I), its non-volatile solid residue (OIL IR), or the oil prepared by steam distillation (OIL II) and hesperidin (HSP) Materials and Methods: For each fraction two doses 300 mg/kg and 600 mg/kg were investigated in mice. The effectiveness is compared to mice treated with the common commercial drug albendazole and infected non-treated mice. Results: The least mean adult count was found in group B treated with albendazole (18.0 ± 4.6) with efficacy of 84.6%. All treated groups with 600 mg/kg showed significant increase in the reduction of adult T. spiralis more than the treated groups by 300 mg/kg. The decrease in the mean number of the adult worms was highly significant in all treated groups (p value < 0.001) except group E (I) treated with OIL II at a dose of 300 mg/kg was only significant (p value < 0.05). Conclusion: Orange peel has a significant anti-Trichinella activity. This activity is attributed mainly to its content of hesperidin, OIL I and OIL IR.

Keywords: Enteral phase, Hesperidin, Orange oil, Orange peel, Trichinella spiralis.