Biochemical and histopathological study in rats intoxicated with carbontetrachloride and treated with camel milk

Abstract

The unique characters of camel's milk make it used extensively in the field of medicine as anti-microbial, antidiabetic and hepatoprotective agent. The lack of studies demonstrating the protective effect of camel's milk against hepatotoxic compound was the main reason beyond the conduction of the current experiment which aimed to investigate the protective effects of camel's milk against carbontetrachloride (CCl4) induced hepatotoxicity. Therefore, 24 rats were fed on standard diet and divided into four groups. Rats of the first group and second groups were injected i/p with paraffin oil and received either tap water (control 1) or camel's milk (control 2), respectively. Rats of the third and fourth groups were injected i/p with CCl4 and received either tap water or camel's milk, respectively. At the end of the experiment (5 weeks), blood and liver samples were collected for biochemical and histopathological analysis. The present findings revealed that, CCl4 elevated serum enzyme activities of liver and some biochemical parameters, but these effects were prevented by the treatment of rats with camel milk. Histopathologically, a great amount of mononuclear cells infiltration, necrotic cells and few fibroblasts were observed in liver of CCl4 treated group. The present study concluded that camel milk treatment may play a protective role against CCl4-induced liver damages in rats. These protective effects were in the form of improving of liver enzyme activities, blood biochemical parameters and histological picture of liver of intoxicated rats. In the future, examination of the liver protective effect of camel milk against CCl4 in dose dependant manner could be investigated. © 2013 Althnaian et al.