Antisnake Venom Activity of Hibiscus aethiopicus L. against Echis ocellatus and Naja n. nigricollis.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Toxicology Volume 2010, Article ID 837864, 8 pages doi:10.1155/2010/837864 Research Article Antisnake Venom Activity of Hibiscus aethiopicus L. against Echis ocellatus and Naja n. nigricollis S. S. Hasson,1, 2 A. A. Al-Jabri,1 T. A. Sallam,3 M. S. Al-Balushi,1 and R. A. A. Mothana4 1 Division of Immunology, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box 35, Muscat, Oman 2 Alex Close, off Gibson Road, Liverpool, L8 1SU, UK 3 Department of Community Health, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Al-Baha University, Saudi Arabia 4 Pharmacognosy Department, College of Pharmacy, King Saud University, P.O. Box 2457, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia Correspondence should be addressed to S. S. Hasson, shyahasson@yahoo.co.uk Received 13 December 2009; Revised 22 March 2010; Accepted 23 March 2010 Academic Editor: Lucio Guido Costa Copyright © 2010 S. S. Hasson et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The objective of the study is to investigate whether the Hibiscus aethiopicus L. plant has neutralization activity against venoms of two clinically important snakes. The H. aethiopicus was dried and extracted with water. Different assays were performed to evaluate the plant’s acute toxicity and its anti-snake venom activities. The results showed that H. aethiopicus extract alone had no effect on the viability of C2 C12 muscle cells, but significantly (P .05) protected muscle cells against the toxic effects of E. ocellatus venom at 55, 150, and 300 μg/mL. The maximum protective effect of the extract wa