TITLE:
Mitochondrial Activity and Cell Damage after Application of Acmella oleracea Leaf Extract
AUTHORS:
Carlos Augusto Priante da Silva, Cristina Pacheco Soares, Walderez Moreira Joaquim, Renato Farina Menegon
KEYWORDS:
Acmella oleracea, Jambú, Cytoskeleton, Nuclei, Cytotoxicity
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Plant Sciences,
Vol.7 No.17,
December
16,
2016
ABSTRACT: Acmella
oleracea is a plant species belonging to the Asteraceae
family, native to the Amazon that has broad therapeutic and culinary use.
Several secondary metabolites and your bioactive component spilanthol have been
associated with its medicinal effects. This study aims to evaluate the leaf
extract of A. oleracea for
therapeutic purposes. When applied to both cell cultures HEp-2 neoplastic cells
and L929 fibroblast cells, the
increasing extract concentrations yielded a significant reduction in cell viability
using ANOVA test with Significance of P ≤ 0.05
(*), Very Significant P ≤ 0.01 (***) and Extremely
Significant P ≤ 0.001 (****), causing
visible damage to cytoskeleton actin filaments. The cytotoxicity of the A. oleracea leaf extract may be
associated with other components, including flavonoids. Thus, A. oleracea has a great cytotoxic
activity on tumoral cells and can be considered for future antitumor therapy.
However, because of its toxicity to non-tumoral cells, it is essential to
evaluate the efficacy of each extract sub-fraction compound, alerting the
population for the traditional use of the plant that can cause damage for the
consumer.