Toxicity of albizia gummifera; a plant commonly used in ethnoveterinary medicine in Kenya

Abstract

Albizia gummifera is a large deciduous, flat crowned tree which has many uses among which is in treatment of conditions such as East coast fever, malaria, headaches, scabies among others. Information on its efficacy and toxicity to animals is however sparse. The current study was aimed at evaluating the acute and sub-acute toxic effects of the aqueous and chloroformic stem-bark extracts of A.gummifera. The stem-barks were collected, air-dried under a shade and ground to a fine powder. Aqueous extracts were obtained by boiling, filtering and freeze drying the ground powder to yield a very fine, beige co loured powdery extract that was 9.28% w/w of the ground powder. Another portion of the ground-powder was extracted with chloroform in a Soxhlet apparatus to yield a dark-coloured, pasty extract that was 2.3% w/w of the ground powder. For the acute toxicity studies, five different doses of the two extracts (2457, 3072, 3840, 4800 and 6000 mg/kg body weight) were administered once orally to five groups (n = 10) of laboratory rats. These were observe,d daily for clinical signs associated with pain, suffering and impending death for \.4 days. The 24-hour, 7-day and 14-day lethal doses 50% (LDso) for the aqueous extract were determined as 6600, 5600 and 5600 mg/kg body weight and for the chloroformic extract as 4800, 3500 and 2900 mg/kg body weight. For the sub-acute studies, three different doses of the chloroformic and aqueous extracts (l00, 300 and 1000 mg/kg body weight) were administered to three groups (n = 10) of laboratory rats each daily by gavage for 28 and 56 days respectively. The rats were observed for clinical signs daily, haematology and blood chemistry value changes every two weeks and gross and microscopic changes terminally during the dosing period. Dos