Abstract

Background: Chronic liver disease (such as hepatitis) is a major health problem worldwide, especially in developing countries. Despite of the tremendous advancement in modern medicine, there is no effective drug available that stimulates liver function. The search of new drugs to protect hepatic injury has been of recent interest. Nigella sativa is used as analgesic, anti-inflammatory, anti-diarrhoeal, antimicrobial, anticancer, immunomodulator, bronchodilator, and also said to be hepatoprotective.

Objective: The aim of this work is to evaluate the hepatoprotective activity of Nigella sativa in Wistar rats and to bring about scientific justification for the use of this drug as a hepatoprotective.

Method: Healthy Male Wistar Rats Were Treated With The Extract Of Nigella Sativa For 14 Days And On Day 14 Hepatotoxicity were induced by the administration of D-galactosamine through Intraperitoneal (IP) route, blood was collected and analyzed for various biochemical parameters, animals were sacrificed for histopathology, and were compared with the effect of Silymarine as a standard drug.

Result: The substantially elevated levels of aspartate amino transferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and albumin were restored significantly by the extract of Nigella sativa.

Conclusion: Administration of N. sativa extract showed recovery against toxic effects of D-galactosamine in rats. The hepatoprotective effect of the drug was further concluded by the histopathological examination of the liver sections, which reveals that the normal liver shape was disturbed by D-galactosamine. The normal cellular shape was retained as compared to silymarine, thereby confirming the protective effect of the N sativa extract.

Keywords: D-Galactosamine, hepatoprotective, Nigella sativa.

Graphical Abstract