Introduction
The importance of medicinal plants and
traditional health systems in solving the
health care problems of the world is gaining
increasing attention. Because of this resurgence
of interest, the research on plants of
medicinal importance is growing phenomenally
at the international level, often to the
detriment of natural habitats and mother
populations in the countries of origin. Most
of the developing countries have adopted traditional
medical practice as an integral part of
their culture. Historically, all medicinal
preparations were derived from plants,
whether in the simple form of raw plant materials
or in the refined form of crude extracts,
mixtures, etc. Recent estimates suggest that
several thousands of plants have been known
with medicinal applications in various cultures
[1].
Some of these plants have been subjected
to the isolation of the active ingredients
(chemical compounds) and their subsequent
modification. A large proportion of such medicinal
compounds have been discovered with
the aid of ethno-botanical knowledge of their
traditional uses. The rich knowledge base of
countries like India and China in medicinal
plants and health care has led to the keen interest
by pharmaceutical companies to use
this knowledge as a resource for research and
development programs in the pursuit of discovering
novel drugs. India is a varietal emporium
of medicinal plants and it is one of the
richest countries in the world as regards genetic
resources of medicinal plants. It exhibits
a wide range in topography and climate,
which has a bearing on its vegetation and floristic
composition. More over the agro climatical
conditions are conducive for introducing
and domesticating new exotic plant
varieties. At present majority of the people are
relying for their primary health care on traditional
medicine [2].
In continuation of our efforts to verify the
efficacy of traditional medicine we have collected
several medicinal plants from various
geographical locations based on the ethnopharmacological
information. In order to
study the toxicity of these medicinal plants we
performed brine shrimp lethality bioassay
which based on the ability to kill laboratory
cultured brine shrimp (Artemia nauplii). The
brine shrimp assay was proposed by Michael
et al. [3], and latter developed by Vanhaecke
et al. [4], Sleet and Brendel [5]. The assay is
considered a useful tool for preliminary assessment
of toxicity and it has been used for
the detection of fungal toxins, plant extract
toxicity, heavy metals, pesticides and cytotoxicity
testing of dental materials [6-10].
The brine shrimp assay is very useful tool
for the isolation of bioactive compounds from
plant extracts [11]. The method is attractive
because it is very simple, inexpensive and low
toxin amounts are sufficient to perform the
test in the microwell scale. In the present
work, we report the cytotoxicity studies on
various medicinal plant species collected from
various geographical locations of India based
on their ethnopharmacological information
and the results obtained were described.