| Abstract: |
Alternative medicine is the hope of medical professionals and patients to stop using drugs and chemicals, which cause a burden on the liver to metabolize and detoxify these agents. Herbal medicine is one of the branches of alternative medicine, which is widely used in last years to deal with many diseases.Portulaca oleracea is one of the most popular herbs so prevalent around the world. It has been widely used in traditional medicine as diuretic, liver tonic, digestive, analgesic, antihelmintic and skeletal muscle relaxant. It also has been extensively studied for its biological activities and has been shown to be anti-diabetic, spasmolytic, bronchodilator and hepatoprotective due to its antioxdant properties.In this work, we studied the carbon tetrachloride-induced hepatoxicity by evaluation of liver function tests (AST, ALT and total bilirubin). Liver tissue was subjected to histopathological examination using the routine Heamatoxylin and Eosin stain. Centrifuged juice of portulaca oleracea was used to determine its effectivness in protection against CCl4 induced liver damage.Portulaca oleracea was given firstly intraperitoneally in doses of (200, 300 and 400 ul/100gm rat/day) for 10 days, the rats were injected by CCl4 (0.2 ml/kg/rat). It was also given intraperitoneally in doses (200 and 300 ul/100gm rat/day) for one day. Also, we tried Portulaca oleracea in doses of (200, 300 and 400 ul/100 gm/rat/day) given orally for 10 days before intraperitoneal injection of CCl4 (0.2ml/kg/rat) for 3 days and one hour before CCl4 for 7 days.The results were statistically analyzed by analysis of variance (ANOVA) test by SPSS for windows version 10.The results revealed elevation in AST, ALT, total bilirubin in CCl4-treated rats. This elevation was accompanied with histopathological changes in the form of hepatic inflammation, hydropic degeneration fatty changes, necrosis and fibrosis.Portulaca oleracea preteated groups showed significant reduction of the elevated enzymes when compared with CCl4 treated group and this was accompained by improvement of the toxic hepatopathy. This improvement was found to be more prominent in Portulaca oleracea groups injected intraperitoneally than in groups given Portulaca oleracea orally.From the results of the present work, it could be concluded that P. oleracea has a hepatoprotective effect against toxic agents like CCl4 when given both orally and intraperitoneally. This effect could be attributed to an antioxidant property, however, further experimental studies are needed to explore the exact mechanism of this hepatoprotective effect.
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