RESEARCH ARTICLE
The Teratogenic Mechanism of Echinochrome as a Hypoglycemic Agent on Wistar Rats
Ayman S. Mohamed1, *, Eman Y. Salah EL Din2, Neveen A. Farag2, Abdel Rahman A. Tawfik2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2019Volume: 9
First Page: 79
Last Page: 83
Publisher ID: TOBIOMJ-9-79
DOI: 10.2174/1875318301909010079
Article History:
Received Date: 18/10/2019Revision Received Date: 25/11/2019
Acceptance Date: 16/12/2019
Electronic publication date: 31/12/2019
Collection year: 2019
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Echinochrome (Ech) is the active ingredient in the Histochrome drug, which possesses strong antioxidant, hypolipidemic and hypoglycemic activity.
Objective:
The present work aimed to characterize the malformations induced by moderate and high dose of Ech during pregnancy.
Methods:
In this study, eighteen (18) female pregnant rats were assigned into 3 groups (6 rats/ group); control group, low dose Ech (0.1 mg/kg) and high dose Ech (1 mg/kg).
Results:
The high dose of Ech caused a significant decrease in the number of embryos, uteri weight, body weight gain, placenta weight, and embryo weight and length. Also, the high dose led to a significant increase in serum AST, ALT, ALP, urea and uric acid of mothers.
Conclusion:
Our findings revealed the first teratogenic effects of high dose Ech. The teratogenic mechanism of Ech works through induction of the hypoglycemic condition in pregnant rats.