Assessment of the mutagenic and antimutagenic activity of Synadenium umbellatum Pax latex by micronucleus test in mice

Abstract

Synadenium umbellatum Pax, popularly known as "cola-nota", is a medicinal plant that grows in tropical regions. The latex of this plant is used against various diseases, such as diabetes mellitus, leprosy, tripanosomiasis, leukemia, and several malignant tumors. The mutagenic, antimutagenic, and cytotoxic effects of the latex of this plant were investigated by measuring the frequency of micronuclei in mice bone marrow cells. To evaluate mutagenicity, the animals were treated with four doses of latex (10, 30, 50, and 100 mg/kg body weight). To study the antimutagenic activity, the animals were simultaneously treated with latex and mitomycin C (4 mg/kg). The cytotoxicity was evaluated by polychromatic and normochromatic erythrocytes ratio. Our results showed a significant increase of frequency of micronucleated polychromatic erythrocytes (MNPCE) compared to the negative control group (p < 0.05). Concerning antimutagenicity, the doses of 10 and 30 mg/kg co-administered with mitomycin C showed significant decrease in MNPCE frequency compared to the positive control group (p < 0.05). However, no significant reduction in MNPCE frequency (p > 0.05) was detected at the doses of 50 and 100 mg/kg. Under our experimental conditions, the results obtained indicate strong mutagenic and cytotoxic activity of S. umbellatum latex except the dose of 10 mg/kg and moderate antimutagenic effect at lower doses.

Morphoanatomic characterization of the stem and the leaf of Tabernaemontana catharinensis A.DC (Apocynaceae) and antimutagenic activity of its leaves

“…Medicinal plants´ antimutagenic activity has been demonstrated for other species used by people for the treatment of diseases. In fact, latex from Euphorbia tirucalli has been widely used to cure ulcers, tumors and warts (Rezende et al, 2004) and Synadenium umbellatum latex has been popularly employed against Hansen´s disease, leukemia and malignant tumors (Melo-Reis et al, 2011).…”

“…Several plants have been used as folk medicine for the treatment of several diseases (Melo-Reis et al, 2011), some of which, such as Solanum validinervium (Suarez et al, 2006), Morinda citrifolia (Brito et al, 2009) and Annona squamosa (Nandhakumar & Indumathi, 2012), showed highly interesting characteristics, while others, such as Bauhinia monandra (Macêdo et al, 2008), Alchornea grandulosa, A. castaneaefolia (Santos et al, 2010) and Cochlospermum regium (Castro et al, 2004;Andrade et al, 2008), proved to be genotoxic.…”

Antigenotoxicity protection of Carapa guianensis oil against mitomycin C and cyclophosphamide in mouse bone marrow

“…Actually, a growing number of studies have identified different plants extracts with antigenotoxic potential, such as: Mentha longifolia (Al-Ali et al 2014), Dioscorea pentaphylla (Prakash et al 2014), Lilium candidum (Jovtchev et al 2014), Eucalyptus Gunnii (Bugarin et al 2014), Camellia sinensis (Bhattacharya et al 2014), Curcuma longa (Liju et al 2014), Celtis iguanaea (Borges et al 2013), Solanum paniculatum (Vieira et al 2013), Synadenium umbellatum (Melo-Reis et al 2011), Ginkgo biloba (Vilar et al 2009), and others. Thus, there has been growing interest in finding and using natural plant products to reduce genotoxic and/or carcinogenic effects.…”

Mutagenicity and antimutagenicity of Salacia crassifolia (mart. Ex. Schult.) G. Don. evaluated by Ames test

“…About 75% of the pure natural compounds found in pharmaceutical industry were isolated following recommendations of folk medicine (Newman and Cragg, 2007). However, many plants used with therapeutic purpose can also present risks to human health, since they can exhibit cytotoxic (Lima et al, 2013), genotoxic (Melo-Reis et al, 2011), and mutagenic activities (Ferreira et al, 2009).…”