In vivo and in vitro Toxicity Studies of Crude and Partially Purified Leaf Extracts of Jatropha curcas in Wistar Albino Rats

Aims: Jatropha curcas (J. curcas) is a plant that has numerous medicinal and industrial applications. Evaluation of in vitro and in vivo acute/sub chronic hepato-renal toxicity of crude methanol J. curcas leaf extract on albino rats, in vitro toxicity of the fractions and characterization of these fractions were carried out in this study.

Study Design: Twenty albino rats were grouped into four, orally administered; 0, 100, 200, and 250 mg/kg daily of the crude extract for 28 days.

Place and Duration of Study: Department of Biochemistry, Bayero University Kano and Department of Pure and Applied Chemistry, Bayero University Kano between July 2016 and April 2017.

Methodology: Partially purified fractions of the extract were obtained by column chromatography. Brine Shrimp Lethality assay of the crude extract and fractions were carried out. FTIR, GC-MS and LC-MS were used to characterize the fractions, one-way anova and probit analysis were used for data analysis.

Results: The oral LD50 of J. curcas extract was found to be 2,391.65 mg/kg. Alkaline phosphatase (ALP), Direct bilirubin (D. BIL) and Albumin (ALB) showed significant (p < 0.05) differences while Alanine amino transferase (ALT), Aspartate amino transferase (AST), Total bilirubin (T. BIL) and Total protein (T.P) showed slight variations in some of the treated groups. Histological features of the liver showed dose dependent mild toxic effect of the extract. Creatinine and potassium levels showed significant (p < 0.05) differences while urea, chloride, sodium and bicarbonate levels slightly differ in some of the treated groups when compared to the control. Abnormal kidney histological features were only observed in the highest dose group. The crude leaf extract, fraction 1, and fraction 2 gave LC50 values of 109.07 µg/ml, 100 µg/ml, and 883.26 µg/ml respectively. Fraction 1 indicated the presence of ursolic acid, betulinic acid, and oleanolic acid while fraction 2 showed fragments of hydroxyl hopanone.

Conclusion: This study showed various toxicity indices that revealed slight toxic effect of the crude methanol leaf extract.