Toxicity Evaluation of Essential oil of Trachyspermum ammi in Acute and Sub-chronic Toxicity Experiments

Background: Trachyspermum ammi is one of the prominent plant in traditional medicine of the east with several medicinal effects such as improvement of stomach disease, digestive disorder, diarrhea, hemorrhoid, bladder stones, respiratory disease and etc. Medicinal plants is one of the important reason of toxicity particularly in children and the elderly therefore, evaluation of the toxic effects of a plant is important. Objective: The aim of present study was evaluation of toxicity of ajowan oil in experimental animals. Methods: Initially, essential oil of the plant fruit was extracted to study the acute toxicity to rats by gavage. The animals were treated with 1000 mg/kg of the essential oil for 23 and 45 days to determine chronic. Hematological and biochemical parameters of rats’ blood samples were collected and spleen, kidney, liver and lung of rats were isolated for histopathologic examination. Results: According to acute studies result lethal dose, 50% (LD50) of ajowan essential oil was about 2294 mg/kg. Chronic evaluation showed that there is no statistical difference between weight, food and water consumption of test and control groups. Further, tissue analysis showed no serious change in examined tissues in the treated rats. Conclusion: Finally according to results, no chemical parameters of blood and histological pattern of tissue were affected by T. ammi oil; however the oil could be classified as moderately toxic due to its LD50 value.