Acute and subchronic oral toxicity assessments of BTL tea in experimental animals

Abstract

Tobacco smoking remains a leading cause of preventable diseases and premature death in many countries. Many smokers want to quit smoking but are not offered the highly effective treatments available to manage tobacco dependency. There has been a current trend for researchers to find new natural ingredients that were safe and still effective in treating tobacco dependence. BTL tea was a herbal-derived product prepared from Herba Menthae, Pogos cablin (Blanco) Benth., Zingiber Officinale Rosc., Flos Chrysanthemi, Radix Glycyrrhizae, Pericarpium Citri deliciosa, and Flos Lonicera. At this time, the safety of this product has not been reported. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate BTL tea’s acute and subchronic toxicity through oral administration in experimental animals. The acute toxicity was determined by Litchfield-Wilcoxon method in mice at the doses of 45.0 g/kg b.w/day to 112.5 g/kg b.w/day. The subchronic toxicity was evaluated following WHO and OECD’s Guidelines in rats with oral doses of 1.08 g/kg b.w/day (equal to recommended human dose) and 3.24 g/kg b.w/day (three times as high as recommended human dose) for four consecutive weeks. As a result, in the acute toxicity test, the mice showed no abnormal sign or death. The subchronic toxicity test, hematological indexes, hepato-renal functions, and microscopic images of liver and kidney were unchanged. However, compared with the control group, there were significant differences in various indexes, including total WBC, lymphocytes, neutrophils, and AST level, but the levels were still safe. In conclusion, BTL tea does not appear to produce acute and subchronic toxicities in mice and rats.