TOXICOLOGICAL STUDIES OF AN AYURVEDIC MEDICINE �??KARPUR RAS�?� USED IN DIARRHOEA

Md. Mamun Sikder, Md. Rakib Hasan*, Swagata Sarkar Lopa, Nayma Abedin, Mohammad Jashim Uddin, Md. Moklesur Rahman Sarker, Mohammed Motaher Hossain Chowdhury and M. S. K. Choudhuri

Karpur Ras (KRP) is an Ayurvedic preparation used as a traditional medicine in the treatment of diarrhea in the rural population. To find out the toxicological characteristic of KRP, it was administered chronically to the male Sprague-Dawley rats at a dose of 40 mg/kg for 28 days. All throughout the experimental period the KRP treated animals were always maintaining decrease in body weight in the overall body weight study compare to their control counterpart. There were a statistically significant (p=0.013) decrease in the absolute weight of rat heart and a statistically highly significant (p=0.009) decrease in the relative percent weight of the heart. There were a statistically highly significant decrease in the absolute weight of the liver (p=0.002) and the relative percent weight of the liver (p=0.005). Also there was a statistically very highly significant (p=0.001) decrease in the organ water content of the liver. There was a statistically highly significant (p=0.004) decrease in the absolute weight of the rat kidney but a statistically significant (p=0.015) decrease was noticed in relative percent weight of the rat kidney. There were a statistically very highly significant (p=0.001) decrease in the absolute weight of spleen relative percent weight of spleen.