IN VITRO EVALUATION OF MUTAGENIC EFFECT OF VITAGNUS AND SHIRAFZA IN HUMAN LEUKOCYTES BY SINGLE CELL GEL ELECTROPHORESIS

The use of herbal drug in Iran has a long history. In spite of the place and efficacy of medicinal plants it is worthy to evaluate their potential mutagenicity and genotoxicity. Vitagnus and Shirafza are herbal medicines, which are widely used in Iran. The purpose of this investigation was to find out the potential mutagenic effect of these herbal drugs by performing Single Cell Gel Electrophoresis (SCGE) or Comet assay in human Leukocytes. In this method the positive control group received H₂O₂ at dose of  100µl as a standard mutagenic agent. The test groups received Vitagnus and Shirafza at doses of 10, 50, 100, 500 and 1000 µl. The following parameters were used as indicators for mutagenicity measurement. No migration, short migration and long migration and the results of the test groups were compared with the mutagenic agent. After analysis of the data the following result were obtained: The results of Shirafza indicated that the drug is safe as did not show any DNA damage or migration. Similarly Vitagnus at low doses did not show any significant mutagenic effect. However, at high dose ( 500 µl) had considerable effect as pointed in long migration. In Conclusion: from the above results and data obtained it is clear that Vitagonus at dose of 500 µl seems to have DNA damaging effect but to prove this statement it is better to perform in vivo studies on different organ / tissue for evaluation of genotoxicity of this herbal drug.