Cytotoxic effect of Vernonanthura polyanthes leaves aqueous extracts

Abstract

Vernonanthura polyanthes, popularly known as assa-peixe, is a medicinal plant that has been widely used by Brazilian Cerrado population for treatment of diseases without a detailed evaluation of their effectiveness, toxicity, and proper dosage. Thus, more studies investigating the safety of V. polyanthes aqueous extract before the use are needed. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the toxicity, cytotoxicity and genotoxicity of V. polyanthes leaves aqueous extract using the Artemia salina and Allium cepa assays. For the A. salina assay, three groups of 10 larvae were exposed to V. polyanthes leaves aqueous extract at the concentrations of 5, 10, 20, 40, and 80 mg/ml. For the A. cepa assay, 5 onion bulbs were exposed to V. polyanthes leaves aqueous extract at 10, 20, and 40 mg/ml, and then submitted to macroscopic and microscopic analysis. As result it was identified a toxicity and cytotoxicity of V. polyanthes dependent on the extract concentration. The A. salina assay suggests that the concentration of 24 mg/ml of the V. polyanthes extract is able to kill 50% of naupllis; while the A. cepa assay suggests that V. polyanthes leaves aqueous extract is toxic at concentrations higher than 20 mg/ml; however the cytotoxic effect in A. cepa root cells was observed at 40 mg/ml of the extract. It is important to say that the V. polyanthes leaves aqueous extract concentration commonly used in popular medicine is 20 mg/ml. Thus, the popular concentration used is very close to toxicity limit in A. salina model (24 mg/ml) and is the concentration which showed toxic effect in A. cepa root cells (20 mg/ml). No genotoxic activity of V. polyantes leaves aqueous extract was observed in the conditions used in this study. Because of the antiproliferative action and no genotoxic activity, V. polyanthes leaves aqueous extract may present compounds with potential use for human medicine. However more detailed studies need to be performed to confirm this potential.

Genus Vernonia (Asteraceae): A Promising Source of Antitumor Agents with Pharmacological Potentials

“…The association of DXR with VpLAE or n-BF in the co-, pre-, and post-treatments demonstrated an anticytotoxic potential of V. polyanthes. In contrast, the cytotoxicity of DXR was potentiated by VpLAE and its aqueous, n-butanol, and ethyl acetate fractions (0.25-1 mg/mL) on human lymphocytes during co-treatment" [83].…”

“…Among species of Vernonia, antitumor properties have been described Vernonia amygdalina [5,11,47,48,49], Vernonia bockiana [50], Vernonia cinerea [51,52,53], Vernonia condensate [54], Vernonia divaricata [43], Vernonia extensa [44], Vernonia fimbrillifera [55], Vernonia glaberrima [56,57], Vernonia kotschyana [58], Vernonia leopoldii [59], Vernonia mespilifolia [60], Vernonia pachyclada [61], Vernonia paniculata [62], Vernonia patula [63], Vernonia polyanthes [64], and Vernonia scorpioides [65,66,67], Vernonia zeylanica [42,68].…”

Integrative analysis in toxicological assessment of the insecticide Malathion in Allium cepa L. system

“…Monitoring of the toxicological/genotoxic effects of chemical substances using biological assays is a useful approach for the identification of danger and risk assessment. Biological assays with the common onion (Allium cepa) are an efficient and sensible system of low cost that has been employed in recent years to assess the cytotoxic and genotoxic potential of several substances (Andrade-Vieira et al, 2017;Küçük and Liman, 2018;Silva Souza et al, 2018;Verma and Srivastava, 2018;Yadav and Chandra, 2018;Bernardes et al, 2019;Kieling et al, 2019;Ranjan et al, 2019;Almeida et al, 2020;Viega et al, 2020). The test results with A. cepa showed a good correlation with the test systems of mammals (Rank and Nielsen, 1994).…”

Bazı Geofit Türlerin Biyoaktif Bileşiklerinin Tuzlu Su Karidesi (Artemia salina)'ne Karşı Toksisite Aktivitesinin Değerlendirilmesi

“…compounds with complex structures. These compounds, which are necessary for the reactions in the metabolism of the living organism, can cause adverse problems when poorly applied and the plant used may have a toxic effect and have a mutagenic or genotoxic potential (Tülay and Özlem, 2007;Almeida et al, 2020). Various experiments are used to investigate the potential toxicity of herbal extracts with in vivo tests on laboratory animals designated as models (Carballo et al, 2002;Mayorga et al, 2010;Veni and Pushpanathan, 2014).…”