EVALUATION OF PARSLEY EFFECT AGAINST GENTAMICIN GENOTOXICITY IN RATS USING RAPD ANALYSIS

The present study was conducted to determine the protective effect of parsley (leaves extract, fresh leaves, seeds and oil) on rat injected intraperitoneally with gentamicin at a dose of 10 mg/kg b.wt. The toxic effects of gentamicin were assessed in term of the changes in relative organs weights in addition the genetic variation in DNA-RAPD profiles in both liver and spleen. Results showed that no significant differences were found between the negative control and all of tested groups for relative liver weights, while the group fed on parsley oil recorded the highest value of relative spleen weight which did not differ than negative control group. For RAPD profiles, the differences in RAPD patterns refer to band intensity, loss of normal bands and appearance of new bands as compared with the negative control group. All these differences were well represented in the patterns produced in gentamicin group as well as all rat groups fed on parsley. Changes in bands intensity which were major event increased by gentamicin effect, were decreased in all groups fed on parsley forms except the group fed on seeds (for liver DNA) and the group fed on parsley leaves extract (for spleen DNA) were increased. Parsley leaves and oil (for liver) and parsley oil (for spleen) exhibited the best effect in reducing the increase in band intensity. All forms of parsley caused a decrease in the genomic template stability (%) values compared to gentamicin group. The major decrease was for leaves extract with regard to liver DNA and for seeds with regard to spleen DNA. Results of this study demonstrated the genotoxic effects of gentamicin on rat's liver and spleen. In addition, the results revealed that parsley oil may be the effective form in reducing gentamicin genotoxic effect followed by parsley fresh leaves.