Abstract

MUTAGENICITY/ ANTIMUTAGENICITY OF PLANT EXTRACTS USED IN TRADITIONAL MEDICINE: A REVIEW

Ammayappan rajam Srividya*, Sangai Palanisamy Dhanabal, Vaithiyalingam Jagannathan Vishnuvarthan

Abstract

Because of the immense potential of medicinal plants used in traditional systems, focus on plant research has increased all over the world and a large body of evidence has been collected. Many plant extracts have demonstrated potent cancer chemo preventive property and most of them are known to exert their effects by antioxidant mechanism either quenching reactive oxygen species (ROS), inhibiting lipid peroxidation or stimulating cellular antioxidant defense. From short term in-vitro and in- vivo studies as well as long term carcinogenicity studies with chemically treated animals confirmed that phytochemicals could possess antimutagenicity and anticarcinogenic effect. So, it is becoming essential to investigate the circumstance under which phytochemicals used in traditional medicine as potential prophylactic agent exhibit beneficial and harmful effects is very much importance. Free radicals, environmental pollution, tobacco smoke, formaldehyde, homologous recombination could be responsible to damage DNA. Various studies such as Ames test, Chromosomal abression test, Micro nucleus test and Sister Chromatid exchange could be used to study the Mutagenicity/ genotoxicity.

Keywords: Mutagenicity, antimutagenicity, genotoxicity, DNA damage.