Cytotoxic and genotoxic effects of Centella asiatica extract in the cultured human peripheral blood lymphocytes

Abstract

Centella asiatica (CA) is a medicinal herb which has been valued in ayurvedic medicine for its different activities. In the present studies, CA methanolic extract was prepared by Soxhlet extraction and then evaluated for the cytotoxicity and genotoxicity in cultured human peripheral blood lymphocytes. Mitotic Index (MI) Cell Proliferation Kinetics (CPK) and Sister-chromatid exchanges (SCE) were scored to measure the cytotoxic and genotoxic effects of the CA extract in cultures set up from the three different healthy donors. The treatment of the cell culture was done employing two different CA methanolic extract concentrations (500 & 1000 µg/ml) and the control (did not receive any additive). Our present studies revealed that the MI, CPK and SCES for control are 4.28, 0.49 and 6.08 respectively where as the CA extracts has the MI, CPK and SCES for 500µg/ml are 4.07, 0.47 and 5.84 respectively and for 1000 µg/ml are 3.96, 0.46 and 5.52 respectively. From the results, we can conclude that the MI and frequency of SCES of CA methanolic extracts are almost similar to that of control which indicates that the CA plant extracts has no significant cytotoxicity and genotoxicity effects in cultured human peripheral blood lymphocytes.