Protective effects of Butea frondosa leaves against stress induced immune impairment in sprague dawley rats

Abstract

Stress is thought to impair immune function through emotional or behavioral manifestations thus the present study was done to assessed the effect of ethanolic extract of Butea frondosa (BF) leaves on behaviour, immunomodulatory activity and brain acetyl cholinesterase activity in normal and stress induced male rats. Neuroprotective effects of BF, doses (100,200,400mg/kg p.o) were measured by assessing the changes in the behaviour and the immunity of the rats. In stress control, the results indicated that the retention transfer latency, time spent in a closed arm, agglutination , total leukocytes counts (TLC), total paw edema ,size of spleen , decreased significantly (p<0.01) while glucose level, size of the kidney and the liver, AChE activity increased significantly (p<0.01) in comparison with normal control. In BF (200mg/kg) treated rats, the results indicated that the time spent in a closed arm (p<0.01), agglutination (p<0.01), TLC (p<0.01), total paw edema (p<0.05), size of spleen(p<0.01) , increased significantly while glucose level (p<0.01), size of the kidney and the liver (p<0.01), AChE activity (p<0.01) decreased significantly in comparison with stress control. This study therefore concluded that the ethanolic extract of BF (200mg/kg) showed a protective effect against the stress induced impaired immune system and the psychological disorders.