SOME LIVER FUNCTION TESTS IN RABBITS FED LANTANA CAMARA LEAVES & EXTRACT

Document Type : Research article

Authors

Abstract

The present investigation was designed to study the toxic effect of different doses of Lantana camara leaves and their processed extract fed to 20 adult healthy male and female Balady rabbits to elucidate their side effects on the functional activity of the liver during the non-green season. Ten g. fresh leaves offered for 7 successive days induced significant increase in serum total bilirubin (P/ 0.001) while 30 g. offered for the subsequent successive 7 days and 2 g processed oily extract (contain ing the active principle triterpenes) mixed with the control ration for one day show ed no increase either in the total bilirubin or in GOT, GPT or total protein. When the fresh and dried leaves offered in liberal amounts to the rabbits instead of the control ration, significant increase (P/ 0.05) in the total bilirubin (from 0.57+0.04 to 0.87+0.117 mg%) was noticed. Symptoms of severe intoxication as recorded in the literature could not be observed during the whole experiment. The moisture and protein contents of the leaves are 67.50% and 16.45% respectively.