Ruqaiya Hasan, Kalim R Khan and Sadia Kiran
Keywords: Poke weed, phytolacca berry, phytolacca Americana, herbal drugs, lipid profile.
Abstract: Present study is concerned to find out the induced effects of two herbal weight reducing drugs Phytolaccca Americana (PA) and Phytolacca Berry (PB) in hypercholestrolemia on lipid profile of Rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus). Pokeweed was the single constituent of PB, the other additional ingredients of PA are bladder wrack, garlic and grape fruit. Both herbal drugs were administered orally to the respective test animals in the doses of 33.3mg PA/day and 1.15mg PB/day, for 27 days and blood samples drawn on day 0,3,9,14,21 and 27 were used to measure mean plasma cholesterol, triglycerides (TG), low density lipoprotein (LDL-C) and high density lipoprotein (HDL-C) concentrations. After one week of administration of drugs although both drugs reduced the cholesterol and TG concentrations to lower levels but PB effectively decreased them below their normal concentrations when given approximately for four weeks. Similarly, both drugs lowered plasma LDL-C concentration after two weeks of treatment again PB reduced concentration below normal. However plasma HDL-C levels declined to normal levels following the one week of treatment, started to elevate along the passage of treatment and decreased to normal in the later part of experiment. These findings suggested that pokeweed comparatively, more effectively maintained the lipid profile at normal concentrations probably inhibiting the HMG-CoA reductase activity and affecting the lipoprotein metabolism. In case of PA interactions of ingredients may interfered the enzymes of lipoprotein metabolism thus constant elevated levels of LDL- C and TG were observed.
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