Acacia Catechu Essay

6 Acute toxicity study ofAcacia catechu seeds

6.1 Introduction

Acacia catechu Willd (Mimosaceae) is commonly called as khair or black cutch. It is known as khadira in Sanskrit and Karungali in Tamil. People in Kerala drink the boiled juice for digestive disorders (Singh, 2006) . In India, there are the three varieties of A. catechu, namely catechu, catechuoides, and sundra. Catechu (heartwood) is commercially used to obtain katha a concentrated filtered extract in North India (Quadry, 2009).

The extracts of various parts of A. catechu exhibit variety of pharmacological effects such as analgesic, antipyretic, anti-inflammatory, antidiarrheal, hypoglycemic, hepatoprotective, gastroprotective, hypotensive, anticancer, antioxidant, and antimicrobial activities. (Ghate et al, 2014) However, no report has been published about the seed extract of A. catechu Willd.other than

6.2.3 Animals: Wistar female rats (150–250 g) that were randomly bred and maintained in the Animal Facility of the Biomedical Research Unit and Laboratory Animal Centre (BRULAC, Saveetha University) were used for the study. The animals were housed in polypropylene cages (4 per cage) containing sterilized paddy husk as bedding material and were provided with pellet diet (commercial feed) and water ad libitum. Animals were cared for and maintained as per the approved guidelines of the “Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals” (CPCSEA, India). This study was conducted according to the OECD 425 guidelines, and the protocol was approved by the Institutional Animal Ethical Committee, Saveetha University (SU/BRULAC /RD/001-2015 Dated 13/03/2015).
6.2.4 Experimental