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Journal of Environmental Biology

pISSN: 0254-8704 ; eISSN: 2394-0379 ; CODEN: JEBIDP
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    Abstract - Issue Jan 2008, 29 (1)                                     Back


paper

Protective effects of Peganum harmala extracts on thiourea-induced

diseases in adult male rat

 

Khaled Hamden1, Hatem Masmoudi2, Feriel Ellouz3, Adelfatteh ElFeki1 and Serge Carreau*4

1Animal Ecophysiology, 2Immunology and 3Biochemistry laboratories, Faculty of Sciences, Sfax, CHU H. Bourguiba, Sfax, Tunisie, France

4Laboratoire de, Biochimie-IBFA, EA 2608-USC INRA, Universite de Caen-14032 Caen, Cedex, France

(Received: March 26, 2006 ; Revised received: April 23, 2007 ; Accepted: July 10, 2007)

Abstract: Cancers and hepatoprotective prevention using traditional medicines have attracted increasing interest. The aim of our study was to characterize the putative protective effects of ethanol and chloroform extracts of Peganum harmala on thiourea-induced diseases in adult male rat. We seek to determine the effects of these plant extracts on body weight, thyroid and endocrine cancer parameters. In addition the putative hepatoprotective effect was checked by the determination of aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) activities and the bilirubin level in the blood. Our data show that ethanol and chloroform extracts of Peganum harmala protected the animal against the carcinogenic effects induced by thiourea since neuron-specific enolase (NSE) and thyroglobulin (TG) levels were back to the normal range. In addition, the observed-hepatocytotoxicity after thiourea treatment was greatly reduced (AST and ALT activities were respectively 270 IU/l and 60 IU/l and in the same order of magnitude as in the untreated rats) as well as the bilirubin levels (6?mol/l) especially for animals receiving the choroform preparation. Therefore we may suggest that extracts of Peganum harmala are efficient to reduce the toxicity induced by thiourea in male rat as far as the above parameters are concerned.

Key words:?? Rat, Peganum harmala, Thiourea, Cancer, Hepatotoxicity

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