Jegathambigai R Naidu1,2,
Rusli Ismail1,
Sreenivasan Sasidharan1 
For correspondence:- Sreenivasan Sasidharan Email: srisasidharan@yahoo.com Tel:+6046534820
Received: 28 December 2012 Accepted: 19 November 2013 Published: 25 January 2014
Citation: Naidu JR, Ismail R, Sasidharan S. Acute Oral Toxicity and Brine Shrimp Lethality of Methanol Extract of Mentha Spicata L (Lamiaceae). Trop J Pharm Res 2014; 13(1):101-107 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v13i1.15
© 2014 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..
Purpose: To determine, in Sprague Dawley rats, the toxicity profile of the methanol extract of Mentha spicata, a plant used in folklore medicine for the treatment of various forms of pain.
Methods: The plant extract, at concentrations ranging from 100 - 0.07 mg/ml, was used to determine the median lethal concentration (LC50) based on brine shrimp lethality assay. Artificial sea water served as control. Acute oral toxicity testing was carried out, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) guidelines, based on serum biochemical analysis and histological investigations of liver, kidney, heart, spleen and lungs.
Results: The LC50 value of Mentha spicata was 1701 µg/ml in brine shrimp lethality assay, indicating that the plant extract is non-toxic. For acute toxicity testing, administration of a single dose of 5000 mg/kg extract to the rats did not produce toxicity, in terms of changes in behaviour or mortality. Moreover, the weight of major organs of the animals did not significantly (p > 0.05) differ from those of the control group. No toxicologically significant (p > 0.05) hematological and biochemical changes were noticed between animals treated with the plant extract and control animals. Treatment with plant extract did not cause any morphological changes in the heart, liver, kidney and lung tissues of the rats. Histopathological examination also did not reveal any toxicity evidence in the extract-treated animals.
Conclusion: The results obtained suggest that the plant extract can be classified as non-toxic.
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