Acute Toxicity Study and Ascertaination of Wound Healing Effect of the Acetone Fraction of Tetrapleura tetraptera Fruit in Excision Wound Model

Aims: The study was aimed at determining the lethal dose of the fruit of Tetrapleura tetraptera and ascertains the wound healing effect of its acetone fraction.

Place and Duration of Study: The department of clinical pharmacy, faculty of pharmacy, University of Uyo, Nigeria, between July and September, 2014.

Methodology: Miller and Tainter method was adopted for acute toxicity testing of the plant’s fruit while the Excision wound model were used to evaluate the wound healing activity with the progressive wound closure rate calculated via the wound width and number of days for complete epithelisation was determined.

Results: The acute toxicity of the aqueous fraction of Tetrapleura tetraptera dry fruit was calculated to be 10,000 mg/kg body weight = 10.0 g/ kg body weight. Topical administration of the Acetone fraction with 0.4 g/ml and 0.6 g/ml doses produced significant increases (P=0.05) in wound width by 0.29±0.07 cm and 0.47±0.09 cm respectively in comparison with the 0.10±0.03 cm of rats treated with 0.2 g of Neobacin powder on the first 12 days after excision. On day 15, 0.4 g/ml had a non-significant increase of 0.06±0.04 cm when compared to the 0.2 g Neobacin powder with 0.02±0.02 wound width.

Conclusion: The acetone fraction of the dry fruit of Tetrapleura tetraptera was not effective on wound healing thus further work should be done using other extracting solvents like Aqueous, Methanol etc. to ascertain the wound healing effect of the dry fruit of Tetrapleura tetraptera claimed by the traditional medicine.