Toxicity study of dibutyl phthalate ofRubia cordifoliafruits:in vivoandin silicoanalysis

Abstract

Natural toxins from plant sources with wide ranges of biological activities reflect the upswing of drug design in the pharmaceutical industry. Rubia cordifolia L. is one of the most important red dye yielding plants. Most of the former researches have focused on the bioactive compounds from the roots of R. cordifolia, while no attention was paid towards the fruits. For the first time, here we report the presence of dibutyl phthalate in the fruits of R. cordifolia. Structural characterization was carried out using Ultraviolet-Visible spectrophotometer (UV-Vis), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), gas chromatography-mass spectrophotometer (GC-MS), Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Acute toxicity of the crude ethanolic extracts of the R. cordifolia fruits was examined in Swiss albino mice. No mortality was observed in all treated mice with 100, 500, 1000 mg/kg body weight of crude extract of R. cordifolia fruit and it indicates that the LD50 value is higher than 1000 mg/kg body weight. This study exhibited a significant change in the body weight. Alanine transaminase (ALT), total protein, triglycerides, glucose, and also the histopathological analysis of liver for all treated mice showed difference from the control group. The dibutyl phthalate was further evaluated for the toxicity study through in silico analysis. Together, the results highlighted that the toxic potential of R. cordifolia fruits extracts and also the toxicity profile of the fruit should be essential for the future studies dealing with the long term effect in animals. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Environ Toxicol 31: 1059-1067, 2016.

A comprehensive review of Rubia cordifolia L.: Traditional uses, phytochemistry, pharmacological activities, and clinical applications

“…The LD 50 value was higher than 1,000 mg/kg. In addition, dibutyl phthalate identified from R. cordifolia fruits was showed a holistic toxicity via in silico analysis (Anantharaman et al, 2016). However, this experimental time is short, and further indepth studies and developmental toxicity studies are needed to determine the effects of R. cordifolia on long-term administration to animals.…”

Simultaneous determination and pharmacokinetics study of four quinones in rat plasma by ultra high performance liquid chromatography with electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry after the oral administration of Qianzhi capsules

“…It will also affect the safety management and quality evaluation of this clinical medication. The reported methods basically focused on TLC , HPLC , NMR spectroscopy, or GC–MS , and the reported sample extraction methods, such as protein precipitation extraction or SPE, cannot give a high extraction recovery rate from rat plasma. Compared with the previous study involving biological sample analysis, the method developed by our laboratory has the advantages of good accuracy, high sensitivity, a short run time, and a low requirement for biological samples.…”