PRECLINICAL EFFICACY AND SAFETY OF HERBAL FORMULATION FOR MANAGEMENT OF WOUNDS

Background: Medicinal plants in Tripathi hills and other developing countries have been scientifically demonstrated to have medicinal benefits but few or none have been translated to products for clinical use. Most herbal products developed by local herbalist and sold to the public are not standardized and lack efficacy and safety data to support use.

Objective: to evaluate the medicinal plants for its wound management and test its preclinical safety and efficacy using rat models.

Methods: Thirty Wistar albino rats were randomly divided into five groups and wounds were surgically created on the mid dorsal region. The wounds were treated topically and group I served as control group administered with distilled water, group II served as standard, Group III served with MESP, group IV treated with MESI and the group V was treated with METR.  The effects of the treatment on the rate of wound closure were assessed.

Results: the plant extracts had significantly higher rate of wound closure which was better than distilled water. The significancy was found to be P<0.01.

Conclusion: In this study, the plant extract showed significant accelerated wound healing in normal Wistar albino rats. The extracts showed good safety profile in experimental animals and better efficacy than standard drug. Among the three plants METR showed more significancy than MESP and MESI. We therefore recommend that the METR can be tried in clinical setting.