Acute and Sub-Chronic Oral Toxicity Study of Methanolic Extract of Caesalpinia volkensii (Harms)

The ability of plants to synthesize varieties of chemical compounds gives them both physiological and pharmacological effects hence their popular use as treatment agents and food. Moreover, medicinal plants use has been accompanied by greatresearch interests, which provides scientists and policy maker accurateinformation to regulate their use.There are several plants with diverse medicinal use in Kenya. However, their safety evaluation cannot match the rate at which they are used. Therefore, there is need to bridge this gap. Only a handful of medicinal plants have undergone safety profiling. In addition, there are no elaborate regulatory bodies in place. This predisposes most of herbal users to toxicity.

Easy availability of herbal medicine has led to their increased use. This has resulted to increased reports of their suspected toxicity and adverse events. Such unwanted reactions can be due to side effects; reactions occurring as a result of overdose, over duration, tolerance, dependence-addiction; hypersensitivity, allergic and idiosyncratic reactions; mid-term and long-term toxic effects. It is such reaction that necessitates toxicity evaluation.Mechanisms of toxicity can present in several ways. One of them is on target whereby the toxicant binds to a targeted receptor with unintended high affinity resulting to untoward reaction. Off target is another mechanism whereby the toxicant binds to unintended receptor resulting to unintended reaction.(Read More)