Acute and sub-acute toxicity study of anti-obesity herbal granules in Sprague Dawley rats

Abstract

Toxicological studies are essential for developing novel medications in pharmaceutical industries including ayurvedic preparation. Hence, the present study is aimed to evaluate acute and 28-days repeated dose oral toxicity of anti-obesity polyherbal granules (PHG) in Sprague Dawley rats by OECD guidelines No 425 and 407, respectively. In an acute oral toxicity study, a single dose of 2 g/kg PHG was administered to rats and mortality, body weight, and clinical observations were noted for fourteen days. However, in the subacute oral toxicity study, the PHG was administered orally at doses of 0.3, 0.5 and 1 g/kg daily for 28 days to rats. Food intake and body weight were recorded weekly. On the 29th day, rats were sacrificed and subjected to haematological, biochemical, urine, necropsy, and histopathological analysis. In an acute oral toxicity study, no treatment-related, mortality, behavioral changes, and toxicity were found throughout fourteen days. Likewise, in the sub-acute toxicity study, no mortality and toxic effects were found in haematology, biochemical, urine, necropsy and histopathological analysis in rats for 28 days of treatment with PHG. Based on these results, the LD50 of PHG was found to be greater than 2 g/kg and the no-observed-adverse-effect level (NOAEL) of PHG for rats was found to be 0.5 g/kg/day. Thus, anti-obesity polyherbal granules showed a good safety profile in animal studies and can be considered an important agent for the clinical management of obesity.

Safety evaluation of a proprietary ayruveda-based polyherbal preparation (arthralgex) used for arthritis

“…Earlier studies have considered change in body weight as an indicator of toxic effects for test products (Tofovic and Jackson, 1999;Raza et al, 2002;Teo et al, 2002). Both hematology and biochemistry suggests that arthralgex drug exposure did not adversely affect the overall health of the rats including behavior, metabolic, and untoward effects on body organs (Prabu et al, 2013;Patel et al, 2022;Olayode et al, 2019). Thus, indicating non-toxic nature of arthralgex on blood parameters, correlating the metabolism with vital organs function.…”

“…As per Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) TG 407 (OECD, 2008b), sub-acute toxicity study is conducted only after knowing snapshot details from acute toxicity studies. It improves understanding about the probable toxic effect on health likely to occur from continuous use of product over a short period (Prabu et al, 2013;Patel et al, 2022). Therefore, acute toxicity study became a foundation for conducting subsequent toxicity studies.…”