IN VITRO AND IN VIVO GENOTOXICITY ASSESSMENT OF TOTAL ALKALOIDS OF AGERATUM CONYZOIDES L. LEAVES (ASTERACEAE) BY ALKALINE COMET ASSAY

摘要

In African traditional medicine, Ageratum conyzoides L. has been used as purgative, febrifuge, anti-ulcer and wound dressing. A. conyzoides contains pyrrolizidine alkaloids, a class of hepatotoxic, genotoxic and carcinogenic phytochemicals. This study aims to evaluate the genotoxicity of total alkaloids of A. conyzoides leaves by the alkaline-comet assay.The comet assay was done on human prostate cancer (PC3) cells and on mice PBMC cells. Our results have demonstrated that, in vitro, the hydroalcoholic extract (200 μg/mL) and total alkaloids (200 μg/mL) of A. conyzoides, which have shown the high cytotoxicity on PC3 cells with MTT assay, increased significantly (p<0.001) DNA damage index (DI) and DNA damage frequency (DF) of PC3 cells. The non-alkaloids and the methanolic extract of A. conyzoides had no effect on DI and DF. In vivo, the administration of total alkaloids of A. conyzoides at 750 mg/kg for 3 days increased significantly (p<0.01) the DI and the DF of mice PBMC cells. Thus, in this study, by in vitro and in vivo comet assay test, we have shown that total alkaloids of A. conyzoides at 750 mg/kg can induce genotoxicity.