Tijani Ahmad Adekilekun, Adekomi Damilare Adedayo, Ogedengbe Oluwatosin Olalekan and Adekeye Adeshina Oloruntoba
Leaves of the Basella rubra plant has been employed in varieties of use by Man. The plant is often used by Man as food supplement because of the nutritional potentials of the plant. The plant has been reported to have an excellent composition of calcium and iron; good source of vitamins A, B, and C, with a high roughage value. The aim of this study was to elucidate the effect of aqueous leaf extract of Basella rubra often used as food supplement on the kidney and liver of Wistar albino rat. Thirty-two adult Wistar albino rats of both sexes were used for this study. They were assigned into three extract treated groups designated as A, B, C, and were administered with 300 mg/kg, 200 mg/kg and 100 mg/kg body weight of the extract respectively, and one control group designated as D, administered with equal volume of phosphate buffered saline (PBS). Administration was done orally (once daily) using an orogastric tube for fourteen days (14d). Twenty-four hours after the last administration, all the animals were sacrificed using cervical dislocation, laparatomy was performed, the kidney and liver were excised, trimmed free of fat, rinsed in cold PBS solution. The liver was quickly fixed in 10% formolsaline, while the kidney was fixed in Bouin’s fluid. In the kidneys, there were neither tubular necroses nor interstitial and glomerular hemorrhage. Both the distal and proximal convoluted tubules were free of occlusion. The glomeruli were also devoid of distortion, derangement and degenerative changes. The histology of the liver displayed normal parenchymal architecture with cords of hepatocytes and portal tracts. The central veins were well preserved. There was no ballooning degeneration of the hepatocytes, necrosis or formation of Mallory bodies. The sinusoids were also devoid of congestion and there were no cytoplasmic vacuolations of the hepatocytes. These findings suggest that the consumption of B. rubra has no deleterious implications on the histological profile of the kidney and liver of Wistar albino rats.
