Antitumor activity with no toxicity of propolis from Meghalaya, India in ascites Dalton’s lymphoma-bearing mice

摘要

Propolis or bee glue is an important natural bee product that has been used by humans to meet the needs of health sinceancient times. Despite its many valuable uses, scientific research on propolis is still limited. Despite rich traditionalzootherapeutic knowledge of the people and affluent biodiversity of North-east India, almost no research study has beenundertaken on the assessment of various biological properties of propolis from this region. Recently, the antibacterial andantitumor activity of the methanolic extract of propolis (MeOH-propolis) from Meghalaya was reported by us only. Thepresent study was undertaken to further examine the antitumor activity and toxicity in ascites Dalton’s Lymphoma bearingmice itself and compare with that of cisplatin, a well established anticancer drug also known to cause different toxicities inthe host. MeOH-propolis showed potent anticancer activity against ascites Dalton’s lymphoma. The assessment of varioustoxicity parameters such as hematotoxicity, nephrotoxicity, hepatotoxicity and sperm abnormality revealed thatMeOH-propolis treatment did not develop any toxicity while cisplatin developed these toxicities in the host. It is suggestedthat the increasing antioxidative defense activity of the MeOH-propolis could be involved in its ability to avoid any toxicityin the host. The findings from the present study showing the combined action of MeOH-propolis as anticancer as well as itsability to stabilize various toxicity parameters in cancer-bearing mice suggest the possibility of using propolis as a naturalalternative to chemotherapy to shun the side effects.