Acute Toxicity (Lethal Dose 50 Calculation) of Herbal Drug Somina in Rats and Mice

Somina (herbal preparation) prepared by Hamdard Laboratories (Waqf) Pakistan is a mixture of five different medicinal plants, widely prescribed for the treatment of mental illness. For acute toxicity, the Karber arithmetic method for the calculation of LD50 and Hodge and Sterner toxicity scale was used. In this study, different doses (10, 100, 285, 500, 1000, 5000 and 10,000 mg/kg) of the extract was administered orally to the different groups of rats and mice. Signs of toxicity and possible death of animals were monitored for 24 hrs to calculate the median lethal dose (LD50) of somina. At the end of the study, all the animals in all the dose groups were sacrificed and the internal organ-body was compared with values from the control group. The LD50 was found to be >10,000 mg/kg body weight upon oral administration in mice and rats as no mortality was observed after single dose administration. According to Hodge and Sterner toxicity scale, the obtained value of LD 50 > 10,000 mg/kg classified the Somina as Practically non-toxic herbal medicine.