Role of Rosemary Leaf Extract Against Various Doses of Gamma Radiation

The present investigation reports the radiomodulatory effect of Rosmarinus officinalis (rosemary) leaf extract against radiation‐induced hematological alterations in Swiss albino mice at various post‐autopsy intervals (i.e., between 24 hours to day 30). Treatment of animals with rosemary extract (1000 mg/ kg body wt) prior to irradiation was found to delay the onset of mortality and reduced the symptoms of radiation sickness such as ruffled hairs, lethargy, anorexia and diarrhea in comparison to radiation alone treated animals. Rosemary treated experimental groups exhibited a dose dependent rise (9 < 6 < 3 Gy) in the number of leucocytes (i.e., lymphocytes, monocytes, basophils, eosinophils and neutrophils) by the 30th day post autopsy interval in comparison to the control. Irradiation resulted in a significant increase in lipid peroxidation levels (p< 0.01, p< 0.001) and a reduction in glutathione levels (p<0.05, p<0.001) in blood as observed in radiation alone treated animals. Conversely, treatment of mice with rosemary extract exhibited a significant decrease (p< 0.01, p< 0.001) in lipid peroxidation level and an increase (p< 0.05, p<0.001) in glutathione content. Introduction Radiation protection is at a cross‐road after radiation incidents and unacceptable tragedies such as those at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Radiation induced damage to the normal tissues can be partially reduced by the use of radioprotectors that reduce the damaging effects of radiation, including radiation‐ induced lethality (4,22,38). Various workers have investigated the potential application of radioprotective chemicals in the event of planned and unplanned exposure (i.e., clinical oncology, radiation site cleanup, military scenarios, radiological terrorism, radiation accidents, etc.) (18,25,40). A substantial amount of research has been carried out in the field of chemical radioprotection during the last few decades; however, no safe and ideal synthetic radioprotectors are available to date. Recently, interest has generated in developing the potential drugs of plant origin for the amelioration of radiation effects. Plants and their products are well known to have an advantage over the synthetic compounds in terms of their potential low/no toxicity at the effective dose with minimum or no side effects (3,9,33,34,41). However, the use of medicinal plants suffers from lack of robust scientific evidence to support their use. Therefore, studies supporting or rejecting their role in the treatment of various health disorders is of great need (3). Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis), belonging to the family Lamiaceae, is a common medicinal and aromatic plant grown in many parts of the world. It is indigenous to Southern Europe, particularly on the dry rocky hills of the Mediterranean region. Rosemary is used as a cu‐ linary herb, a bev‐ erage drink, as well as in cosmet‐ ics; in folk medi‐ cine it is used as a tonic and stimu‐ lant, analgesic, anti‐rheumatic, carminative, diu‐ retic, expectorant, antiepileptic, anti‐ spasmodic in renal colic, dysmenor‐ rhoea, for relief of respiratory disor‐ ders, effects on Copyright: ©2007 Garima Sancheti et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Contact: P. K. Goyal Email: [email protected] Received: July 29, 2006 Accepted: January 28, 2007 Published: August 1, 2007 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.tfljournal.org/article.php/ 2007042416194363 Trees for Life Journal 2007, 2:2