Acute and subacute toxicity study of the ethanol crude extract of Leptadenia hastata plant (Pers.) Decne. in Wistar rats

Background: From a long time in history medicinal plants have been used traditionally for the treatment of many diseases. The plant Leptadenia hastata (Pers.) Decne of the family Asclepiadaceae has been used in the management of many ailments.Objective: This experimental research was designed to evaluate the toxicity profile of the ethanol whole plant extract of Leptadenia hastata in Wistar rats.Material and Methods: Five groups of rats were used for the toxicity study in which group 1 was used as control while Groups 2, 3, 4 and 5 were administered 200, 400, 800 and 1600 mg/kg of the extract. Subacute toxicity study was carried out for 30 days by oral administration of the different doses of the extract and blood samples were taken for biochemical and haematological investigation. Histopathological study was also conducted on pancreas, liver, kidney and heart.Results: The LD50 for acute toxicity study of the extract was found to be greater than 5000 mg/kg indicating relative safety. From the subacute study, there were no significant changes in the levels of the biochemical and haematological parameters when compared with the control group except for AST, ALP, HCO3+, MCV, platelets and platelet width distribution. Likewise, the morphological and histological investigations showed that the colour and architecture of the harvested organs were preserved with no signs of inflammation or distortions in their appearances when compared with the control.Conclusion: The results of this study indicated that the extract of Leptadenia hastata was found to be relatively safe.Keywords: Leptadenia hastata, Acute and Sub-acute toxicit

Effect of Pharmacist Intervention on Quality of Life of Patients with Major Depressive Disorder in Distressed North East Nigeria

Background: Quality of life is considered as an integral component and outcome indicator of mental illness and while pharmacist interventions have been proven to be effective in improving quality of life, no attention has been given to patients with depression in distressed North East Nigeria.Objectives: To explore the effect of pharmacist intervention on quality of life of patients with major depressive disorder.Materials and Methods: A longitudinal prospective randomized controlled trial approved by Ahmadu Bello University Ethics Committee on use of Human Subjects for Research (approval number: ABUCUHSR/2020/018) was conducted on 101 patients with major depressive disorder between April 2019 and March 2020 at a tertiary Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital in Maiduguri, Nigeria. Consenting patients were randomized into Usual Care or Intervention groups using a computer-generated list. The intervention consisted of pharmacist-delivered educational counseling sessions of between 15-30 minutes. Data were collected at baseline, 3 months and 6 months using the World Health Organization Quality of life Bref scale.Results: After the intervention, significant improvements (p <0.001) in mean scores of participants in the intervention group were observed in all of the quality-of-life domains including; physical health [42.49 (SD=11.48) vs 72.25 (SD=15.82], psychological health [45.15 (SD=15.24) vs 85.57 (SD=12.95)], social relationship [40.47 (SD=21.24) vs 78.20 (SD=18.23)] and environment [40.94 (SD=14.09) vs 87.74 (SD=9.78)].Significant improvements (p <0.001) were also observed in the general health [38.77 (SD=27.51) vs 86.53 (SD=21.27)] and overall quality of life [52.55 (SD=19.26) vs 76.92 (SD=25.16)] in the intervention group.Conclusion: Pharmacist’s intervention significantly improved quality of life in patients with major depressive disorder in this study