The Toxicology And Pharmacodynamic Study Of Crude And Processed Homalomena Gigantea Engl

Homalomena gigantea Engl. belongs to Homalomena genus of Araceae plants. Widely distributed in tropical Asia and America, about 160 species of them exist all around the world. In China, there are 4 species. Modern pharmacologic researches have found that Homalomena genus plants have biological activity on anti-inflammatory, analgesic, anti-bacterial effects and so on.Homalomena gigantea Engl. is one of the medicinal plants often used in nationalities area, which has been widely used to cure various diseases. Chinese medicine practitioners believe that it is anesthetic in flavor, fishy in smell, warm in nature, and it can clear away heat, cough and rheumatoid. However, it is poisonous, and needs to be processed and decreased toxicity before being used.Presently, the study on the Toxicology and Pharmacology of Homalomena gigantea Engl. has not been reported yet. In order to develop and use the Homalomena gigantea Engl. better, the Pharmacology and Toxicology of Homalomena gigantea Engl. preprocessed and processed was studied respectively in this paper.To study the acute toxicity of crude and processed Homalomena gigantea Engl. and conduct a preliminary evaluation of safety, a pretest was taken to judge the possibility of LD₅₀. The LD₅₀ or maximum tolerence dose (MTD) was measured by intragastric administration crude and processed Homalomena gigantea Engl. with the maxium concentration and the maxium amount in mice. The MTD of processed Homalomena gigantea Engl. is 240 g/kg·d while the MTD of crude Homalomena gigantea Engl. is 60 g/kg·d. The MTD of processed Homalomena gigantea Engl. showed that the MTD of mice was 480⁸00 times of that of normal human. The experimental result showed that the toxicity of processed Homalomena gigantea Engl. decreased obviously and the processed one had little toxicity.Through a animal experimental study on irritant effect of Homalomena gigantea Engl., tests show that processed Homalomena gigantea Engl. can obviously reduce irritation. By adopting irritant experimental methods of intraperitoneal injection towards mice and the rabbit eye irritant test, we compare the irritant effect of the samples of crude and processed Homalomena gigantea Engl. and produce pathological sections of rabbit cornea tissue. Compared with Homalomena gigantea Engl. no-soaked, the one immersed in water would result in decreases of capillary permeability and obviously reduce PGE₂ level of inflammatory material in exudate. The irritation of rabbit eye would decrease obviously. Methanol extract of crude and processed Homalomena gigantea Engl. have no irritation to rabbit eyes. The experimental results show that processed Homalomena gigantea Engl. can obviously reduce the irritation and its irritating ingredients do not dissolve in methanol but dissolve in water.Through comparing and studying the experiment of mice anti-inflammatory, analgesic pharmacodynamics effects on the crude and processed Homalomena gigantea Engl., simultaneously comparing with the acute toxicity and the irritability, we can conlude that the curative effect of decreased toxicity can be received in the processed Homalomena gigantea Engl.. The experiment provides a scientific basis for the drug safety in clinical practice and the Processing Technology formulation of Homalomena gigantea Engl. .