EVALUATION OF STRESS ALLEVIATING POTENTIAL OF PERGULARIA DAEMIA ON CERTAIN IMMUNOLOGICAL PARAMETERS

Objective: Pergularia daemia [PD] Forsk, commonly called Veliparuthi†in Tamil belongs to the family of Asclepiadaceae. It has been used by villagers as traditional folk medicine for various ailments such as antipyretic, anti-venom, emmenagogue, anti-helminthic, and to treat malarial fever, infantile diarrhea. Scientific reports revealed several pharmacological properties of PD extract. Preliminary in vitro studies on the plant revealed the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial activities of the plant. So the present study planned to investigate the in vivo stress alleviating the potential of  PD extract on noise stress induced model of wistar albino rats.Methods: Adult Wistar albino rats were exposed to pure tone noise stress for 45 min for one day and the effect of ethanolic PD extract on plasma corticosterone, organ weight body weight ratio of lymphoid organs and adrenal gland,immunological parameters like total leucocyte count, differential leukocyte, neutrophil adherence test and candida phagocytosis was studied.Results: Results revealed that acute stress significantly increased the plasma corticosterone level [p<0.001] and decreased the organ weight body weight ratio of the spleen [p<0.001] and thymus [p<0.01]. It also significantly decreased the total leucocyte count [p<0.001], percentage of neutrophils [p<0.001], eosinophils [p<0.004] and lymphocytes [p<0.001], neutrophil adherence [p<0.001] and enhanced the phagocytic index and avidity index [p<0.001] in acute noise stress exposed groups. Administration of PD extract significantly prevented those acute noise stress-induced changes [p<0.001].Conclusion: We can be  PD extract protected against the noise stress induced changes in albino rats and this stress alleviating and immunomodulatory potential of the plant may be attributed to the phytochemicals and bioactive compounds present in it.Keywords: Stress indices, Immunomodulatory, bioactive compounds, Pergularia daemiaÂ