Abstract

Objective: To investigate the genotoxic and mutagenic potentials of Euphorbia helioscopia (Family: Euphobiaceae) latex and methanolic leaves extract. Methods: Comet assay was adopted to investigate genotoxicity potential and Maron and Ames protocol was followed to evaluate mutagenicity of standardized methanolic leaves extract and latex in concentrations of 10, 5, 2.5, 1.25, 0.625 µg/mL and 1 000, 200, 40, 8, 1.6 µg/mL respectively. Results: Latex did not damage DNA in lymphocytes and could not produce revertant of Salmonella typhimurium (TA98) at any of the experimental concentrations. While, methanolic leaves extract showed 190.00 ± 0.51 revertants in Salmonella typhimurium (TA98) plate incubated with extract at 10 µg/mL and also damaged lymphocytes DNA at the same concentration. There was statistically significant difference, P < 0.05, at 10 µg/mL/plate concentration with reference to negative control. Pearson correlation was 0.948 showing high consistency between results of comet assay and Ames test. Conclusion: It was concluded that latex showed no mutagenic and genotoxic potentials at concentrations ranging from 1.6-1 000 µg/mL. Whereas, mutagenic and genotoxic potential threshold level of methanol leaves extract appeared at 10 µg/mL concentration, while remaining used concentrations were devoid of any toxicity.

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