| 14-day study |
Short-term (1-30 days) |
Twenty four male Wistar rats, weighing 185-200gm were obtained from the NIN, Hyderabad, India. The rats were housed in polypropylene cages and were fed a standard pellet diet (Hindustan Lever Ltd, Lipton India, Bangalore) and water supplied ad libitum till the duration of experiment. The animals were allowed to acclimatize to the laboratory conditions before the commencement of experiment. The rats were divided into 4 groups with 6 animals in each.The first group is treated as control in which the animals were injected intraperitoneally (i.p.) with mammalian physiological saline, the second group was administered sodium fluoride (NaF) - (20 mg NaF/Kg bw) through intraperitonial injection and the third and fourth groups were injected sodium fluoride (NaF) i.p. (20 mg NaF/Kg bw) and concomitantly crude aqueous tamarind fruit pulp extract (150mg and 300mg/kg bw respectively) was orally fed by oral intubation. (The doses of NaF 20mg/Kg bw is well below the LD50 for rodents, which is reported to be 51.6 mg F/Kg bw/day). Similarly the dose of tamarind is chosen on the basis of earlier studies by different workers. The rats were maintained for 14 days. After 14 days animals were sacrificed by cervical decapitation, Gastrocnemius muscle was dissected out, blotted free of blood and immediately transferred to ice cold conditions and used as per the requirement for each parameter to be studed. |