Evaluation of acute and subacute toxicity of Abhrasindoora: As a mercury-based traditional herbo-bio-mineral metallic formulation

Abstract

Herbo-bio-mineral metallic preparations such as Abhrasindoora offer advantages over plant drugs under their stability over a period, lower dosage, and contain minerals and metals as an integral part of the formulations. The use of metals in medicine is often associated with toxicity. Present study was conducted to explore the acute and sub-acute toxicity study of Abhrasindoora in Wistar albino rats. Information related to possible health hazards, the estimate of no-observe-adverse-effect-level (NOAEL), hematology, and biochemical and histopathology parameters were studied. For the acute toxicity study rats were divided into two groups: Group I (Test group: 300 mg/kg) and Group II (Confirmatory group: 2,000 mg/kg) as per OECD 423 guidelines and for subacute toxicity study, rats were divided into four groups as Group I (water as the vehicle), Group II (600 mg/kg), Group III (800 mg/kg) and Group IV (1,000 mg/kg) as per OECD 407 guidelines. Clinical signs (daily); body weight and feed consumption (weekly) were taken. Blood samples were collected from the retro-orbital sinus before the necropsy (29 th day). For statistical analysis, one-way ANOVA and Dunnett’s test were used. In comparison to the control group, no mortality or adverse effects were observed. No significant variations were observed in hematological and biochemical parameters. In target organs, no significant changes were observed in both acute and sub-acute toxicity studies. No deaths or any signs of toxicity were observed after oral administration in the acute toxicity study up to the dose of 2,000 mg/kg and in the sub-acute toxicity study up to the dose of 1,000 mg/kg.