Abstract

About 80% of the population in many third world countries rely on traditional medicine as the sole means of therapy against diseases. Carica papaya is a medicinal plant which has been proven to contain substances that and is being used for such purposes. This study was designed to evaluate the acute hepatotoxic and nephrotoxic effects of orally administered aqueous and ethanolic extracts of Carica papaya seed in adult Wistar rat in low and high doses. The OECD (2003) guideline for testing of chemicals was used for the acute oral toxicity study to determine LD50 and was found to be above 2000 mg/kg. The acute studies were done using five adult Wistar rats per group. Group one was the control, group two and three received 100 mg and 1000 mg/kg body weight of aqueous extract respectively while groups four and five received 100 mg and 1000 mg/kg body weight of ethanolic extract respectively. The animals were dosed for 5 days orally. The haematological indices for both extracts were within normal range and so also were the renal function test and liver function test. The histological studies of the liver kidneys and spleen did not reveal any pathologic changes when compared to the control group. In Conclusion it can be said that aqueous and ethanolic extracts of Carica papaya seed extract are not hepatotoxic and nephrotoxic to adult wistar rats in the tested doses and duration.

Keywords:

Carica papaya, hepatotoxic, histology, kidney, liver and spleen, wistar rats,

References

Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

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The authors have no competing interests.