Estrogenic and mutagenic activities of Crotalaria pallida measured by recombinant yeast assay and Ames test

BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Research Article

Maria do Socorro F Melo¹  Wagner Vilegas¹  Lívia Greghi Espanha²  Flávia Aparecida Resende²  Ana Paula Oliveira Höhne²  Catarine Haidê Nogueira²  Paula Karina Boldrin²  Mariana Santoro de Camargo²  Eliana Aparecida Varanda² 

[1] Chemical Institute of Araraquara, UNESP-São Paulo State University, c.p. 355, 14800-900, Araraquara, São Paulo, Brazil;Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Araraquara, UNESP- São Paulo State University, Rodovia Araraquara-Jaú, Km 1, 14801-902, Araraquara, São Paulo, Brazil;

关键词: Crotalaria pallida;    Mutagenicity;    Ames test;    Estrogenicity;    Recombinant yeast assay (RYA);   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6882-13-216

 received in 2013-03-20, accepted in 2013-09-02,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundCrotalaria pallida Ailton is a plant belonging to the Fabaceae family, popularly known as “rattle or rattlesnake” and used in traditional medicine to treat swelling of the joints and as a vermifuge. Previous pharmacological studies have also reported anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial and antifungal activities. Nevertheless, scientific information regarding this species is scarce, and there are no reports related to its possible estrogenic and mutagenic effects. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the estrogenic potential of C. pallida leaves by means of the Recombinant Yeast Assay (RYA), seeking an alternative for estrogen replacement therapy during menopause; and to reflect on the safe use of natural products to assess the mutagenic activity of the crude extract from C. pallida leaves, the dichloromethane fraction and stigmasterol by means of the Ames test.MethodsThe recombinant yeast assay with the strain BY4741 of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, was performed with the ethanolic extract, dichloromethane fraction and stigmasterol isolated from the leaves of C. pallida. Mutagenic activity was evaluated by the Salmonella/microsome assay (Ames test), using the Salmonella typhimurium tester strains TA100, TA98, TA97 and TA102, with (+S9) and without (-S9) metabolization, by the preincubation method.ResultsAll samples showed estrogenic activity, mainly stigmasterol. The ethanolic extract from C. pallida leaves showed mutagenic activity in the TA98 strain (-S9), whereas dichloromethane fraction and stigmasterol were found devoid of activity.ConclusionConsidering the excellent estrogenic activity performed by stigmasterol in the RYA associated with the absence of mutagenic activity when evaluated by the Ames test, stigmasterol becomes a strong candidate to be used in hormone replacement therapy during menopause.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Boldrin et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.