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Role of
green tea on nicotine toxicity on liver and lung of mice:
Histological and morphometrical studies
Azza M. Gawish1*, Aliaa M.
Issa1, Nahed S. Bassily2 and Sherin M.
Manaa2
1Department
of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Cairo University, Egypt.
2National
Organization for Drug Control and Research, Dokki – Giza,
Egypt.
*Corresponding author. E-mail:
Azzagawish@gmail.com.
Accepted 29 August, 2011 |
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Nicotine is the more abundant component in cigarette
smoking. The natural diet contains a variety of compounds,
such as green tea that exhibit protective effects towards
different toxicities. Nicotine is firstly metabolized in
liver, and the lung is the main target organ susceptible to
smoking; so, this study was aimed to investigate the effects
of nicotine on this organs using histopathological and
morphometrical methods and study the protective effect of
green tea against toxicity of nicotine. Four groups of the
male Swiss albino mice were used: untreated control group;
nicotine–treated group (2.5 mg/kg/day); green tea-treated
group (40 mg/kg./day); and nicotine and green tea
intraperitoneally treated group for 28 days. The
histological examinations of this study revealed a damage
and degeneration in the lung and liver tissues of the
nicotine treated animals. Green tea administration to
nicotine-treated mice showed reduction in the tissues damage
associated with the nicotine administration. Green tea
administration to nicotine-treated mice ameliorated the
increase in the size of nucleus of liver and restored the
normal distribution of elastic fibers in lung. These
results, along with previous observations, suggest that
green tea may be useful in combating tissue injury that is a
result of nicotine toxicity. Hence, the intake of green tea
might suppress the toxicity and mutagenic activity of
nicotine.
Key words:
Nicotine, green tea, cigarette smoking, toxicity, apoptosis. |
