International Journal of Sciences: Basic and Applied Research (IJSBAR) ISSN 2307-4531 http://gssrr.org/index.php?journal=JournalOfBasicAndApplied Cytotoxicity and Acute Oral Toxicity Study on Quassin and Fractions of Quassia amara Extract Olawale O. Obembe a, c* , Ganiyat K. Oloyede b and Yinusa Raji c a Department of Physiology, College of Health Sciences, Osun State University, Osogbo, Nigeria b Department of Chemistry, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria c Department of Physiology,University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria a Email: obembe24@yahoo.com b Email: oloyedegk@gmail.com c Email: yoraji@yahoo.com Abstract Different fractions of Quassia amara and its bioactive compound quassin have been implicated in male reproductive toxicology. Toxicity results obtained from brine shrimp lethality test on chloroform, methanol and hexane fractions of Quassia amara gave LC 50 value of 93.4569μg/ml, 172.0463μg/ml, and 46.1941μg/ml respectively. LC 50 of quassin was 0.0000μg/ml. Acute oral toxicity was by OECD limit test procedure and methanol extract of Quassia amara showed no lethality up to 5000mg/kg. Quassia amara and quassin therefore has toxicity activity. Methanol fraction is comparatively least toxic to brine shrimp and also well tolerated by the systemic organs of experimental rats. Keywords: Quassia amara; quassin; toxicity; brine shrimp. 1.0 Introduction Quassia amara is a 6-8 meters tall tree native to Suriname, Brazil, in South America and is naturally distributed in several tropical countries. It is a member of the Simaroubaceae family of plants, which are neither shrubs nor tress. It grows 4 to 6 meters in height. Its synonyms include suriname, amargo and bitterwood. ---------------------------------------------- *Corresponding author. Tel.: +2348033516858 E-mail address: obembe24@yahoo.com 139 brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by GSSRR.ORG: International Journals: Publishing Research Papers in all Fields