Immunopotentiating Effect of an Ayurvedic Preparation from Medicinal Plants

Abstract

A formulation of Ocimum sanctum, Phyllan- thus emblica, and Glycyrrhiza glabra in a defined ratio termed CIM-Candy was prepared based on Ayurvedic methodology. To study the humoral im- mune response, rabbit red blood corpuscles (rRBCs) were used as an antigen. Mice were immunized on day 7 and 14days the start of the experiment us- ing an intraperitoneal injection of 200 lofrRBCs (2 × 10 8 cells/ml). Humoral immune response, body weight variation, and hematology parameters were studied. CIM-Candy at doses of 10 and 100 mg/kg body weight enhanced the immune function by sig- nificantly increasing (p < 0.05) the hemagglutination antibody titer response against the rRBCs. Signifi- cant changes were not observed in body weight and hematology parameters when comparing the normal vehicle control and treatment groups. As the biolog- ical activity of the plant-derived formulation was not assigned to a single chemical, high performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC) fingerprinting was also performed to confirm the chemical characteris- tic of the formulation. The results of this study sug- gest that the standardized formulation CIM-Candy exhibited significant humoral immune response in Swiss albino mice.