Toxicological Studies of Leaf extract of Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni in Sprague-Dawley Rats
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Abstract
Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni is a perennial shrub native to South America. The study evaluated the
safety profile of the leaf extract of stevia in Sprague-Dawley rats. Both acute and chronic
toxicity studies were performed. Twenty-four (24) male Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into
four groups of six animals in each group. Stevia was administered for 28 days via oral gavage to
the rats at doses of 125, 500 and 2000 mg/kg body weight respectively and the control group
was administered distilled water. Acute oral toxicity study was performed in Swiss albino mice
of either sex for a 72h period and no death was recorded. In the chronic study, stevia extract
demonstrated no adverse effects on body weights, absolute organ weights and relative organ
weight ratio in the treated rats at any doses. Evaluation of the haematological and biochemical
parameters demonstrated no toxic effect in the treated rats. Besides, stevia extract significantly
decreased the serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST),
cholesterol, triglyceride and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) levels compared to the control
animals. The results demonstrated a significant *(p< 0.05) decrease in hemoglobin (Hb) level at
2000 mg/kg and red blood cell (RBC) count at 500 mg/kg doses of stevia respectively, though
the changes did not follow dose dependent manner. Present study reported the non-toxic nature
of stevia extracts on chronic oral administration. The LD50 values of the stevia extracts were
considered to be more than 5000 mg/kg body weight (BW) as no toxicity was observed up to
5000 mg/kg BW in treated animals.
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