BACKGROUND Sanguinarine (SG) has been reported to form DNA adducts in vitro and increase the levels of DNA single strand breaks in the blood and bone marrow of mice treated intraperitoneally with SG. Recently, we showed no genotoxic effects of orally administrated 120 mg/kg feed Macleaya cordata extract (a mixture of sanguinarine and chelerythrine) in pigs or rats in 90-day studies. The goal of...

The alkaloids from Chelidonium majus L. which had a significant inhibitory effect in mitochondrial respiration were those which contain a positive charge due to a quaternary nitrogen atom, i.e., chelerythrine, sanguinarine, berberine and coptisine, both with malate+glutamate or with succinate as substrates. When malate+glutamate was used as substrate, chelerythrine and berberine, which contain ...

background:epidemic dropsy occurs due to ingestion of mustard oil contaminated with oil from argemone mexicana, leading to edema and tenderness of the abdomen, upper and lower limbs. in this study, clinical profiles of patients presented with epidemic dropsy in north india are described. methods: this was a prospective study of patients presented with epidemic dropsy to the emergency department...

The work is a study of the geometry of the molecules via molecular mechanics of the main alkaloids found in the seeds of Argemone Mexicana Linn, a prickly poppy, which is considered one of the most important species of plants in traditional Mexican and Indian medicine system. The seeds have toxic properties as well as bactericide, hallucinogenic, fungicide, insecticide, in isoquinolines and san...

The potential induction of a programmed cell death (PCD) in Trypanosoma b. brucei by 55 alkaloids of the quinoline, quinolizidine, isoquinoline, indole, terpene, tropane, steroid, and piperidine type was studied by measuring DNA fragmentation and changes in mitochondrial membrane potential. For comparison, the induction of apoptosis by the same alkaloids in human leukemia cells (Jurkat APO-S) w...

Bioactive alkaloids occupy an important position in applied chemistry and play an indispensable role in medicinal chemistry. Amongst them, isoquinoline alkaloids like berberine, palmatine and coralyne of protoberberine group, sanguinarine of the benzophenanthridine group, and their derivatives represent an important class of molecules for their broad range of clinical and pharmacological utilit...

Schistosomiasis, a snail-borne parasitic disease, affects more than 200 million people worldwide. Currently the treatment of schistosomiasis relies on a single therapy of praziquantel, a drug developed over 30 years ago. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop alternative antischistosomal drugs. In the pursuit of novel antischistosomal drugs, we examined the antischistosomal activities of 45 c...

The benzophenanthridine alkaloids sanguinarine, chelerythrine and chelidonine were reported previously to provoke cell death in a variety of tumor cells suggesting their potential application as anticancer agents. Here we tested their effects on a primary human uveal melanoma cell line, OCM-1. Flow cytometric analysis of annexin V binding/PI exclusion and DNA fragmentation disclosed that all th...

Argemone mexicana Linn. (Linnaeus, 1753; Tournefort, 1694), is a herb of the Papaveraceae (poppy family) indigenous to the West Indies (Fig. 1). The study of this herb and its active principles is important, first to circumvent the serious epidemics of dropsy and glaucoma resulting from the unintentional ingestion of its seed oil in tropical countries; secondly to find a method of producing in ...