Estudo fitoquímico e avaliação de toxicidade dos extratos de Furcraea cubensis frente a Artemia salina Leach

Abstract

Plant species, such as medicinal plants, ornamental and for food, are also sources of secondary metabolites, organic substances with pharmacological, toxicological and nutritional properties that serve a wide range of purposes. Thus, it is a challenge to isolate and determine the structure of these active compounds present in the extracts of these plants, considering that an extract from a plant may contain hundreds or thousands of secondary metabolites that often character ize the plant species. Therefore, the literature suggests some methods of extraction of these compounds and the use of vegetables for food and medicinal purposes, requires the performance of toxicity tests to evaluate the safety of the same. The test using Artemia saline Leach is low cost and easy laboratory manipulation, in addition to replacing in vivo tests with rats, mice and rabbits. Furcraea cubensis is a plant of the family agavaceae, which has few studies in the literature. In this way, the objectiv e of this work was to carry out tests of identification of secondary metabolites and to perform toxicity test against Artemia salina from the extracts of Furcraea cubensis. In this research, the classes of metabolites identified were saponins, tannins and alkaloids. In the toxicity evaluation tests, extracts from the leaves of F. cubensis, called E1 and E2, were considered moderately toxic and E1 could present cytotoxic activity, whereas extract E3 the results indicated that it is non-toxic. These toxicity results are considered important because, according to the literature, the sample tested proved to be toxic to A. salina, its effects will also be the same in humans. Thus, the results indicate that extract E3, considered nontoxic, is composed of methotoli tes with potential for use as a herbal remedy.