ANTIMUTAGENIC ACTIVITY OF ZUCCAGNIA PUNCTATA EXTRACTS

ZAMPINI IRIS CATIANA; NIEVA MORENO MARIA INÉS; ORDOÑEZ ROXANA M.; VATTUONE M. A; ISLA MARIA INÉS.

Tafí del Valle - Tucumán

Jornada; Jornadas de Biología; 2004

Zuccagnia punctata Cav. (Fabaceae) is a South American plant which are known under the common name of jarilla pispito, pus-pus and jarilla macho. In a previous work we reported that tincture of Z. punctata aerial parts had inhibitory effect against Gram (-) human pathogen bacteria and antioxidant activity. The present study was conducted to investigate antimutagenicity of Z. punctata leaves and stem extracts through Ames Test using Salmonella typhimurium TA98 y TA100 with and without metabolic activation.  The antimutagenic activity was evaluated using different concentration of Z. punctata extract (0.25, 0.5, 2.5, 5, 10, 20, 40, 80 µg of phenolic compounds/plate). The mutagen used was 4-nitro-o-phenylendiamine (NPD). The alcoholic extracts showed inhibition of mutagenicity  of  NPD either in TA98 or in TA100 systems in the presence or in absence of S9 mix. The ID50 was 10  µg/plate. Our results demonstrated that Z. punctata leaves and stem extracts had compounds with antimutagenic activity. These findings are important for pharmacological applications in degenerative disease prevention such as cancer.