The medicine Pañca cūta meḻuku (PCM) referenced in the Siddha literature Yūkikarical- 151 was chosen for the dissertation and approved formally by institution.
2. The metal drugs were authenticated by experts in Chemistry department, Siddha Central Research Institute, Chennai.
3. The herbal drugs were authenticated by experts in Herbal garden, Siddha Central Research Institute, Mettur dam.
4. Drug were purified as per the literature and subjected to preparatory procedures.
5. The medicine PCM was successfully prepared with precautionary measures and authenticated.
6. As per PLIM guidelines standardization parameters and qualitative analysis were studied.
7. FTIR analysis showed the presence of both organic and inorganic substances.
8. Approximately 95% degradation of PCM at with most of the mercury epaporating above 400oC indicated the presence of significant organic form of mercury in final PCM
9. This was substanciated by elememtal analysis, as it showed the decrease in percentage of mercury before and after trituration.
10. Following that XRD was performed to know the speciation of elements in PCBbefore trituration and PCM-FINAL and the inference indicates that the presence of HgCl2 and Hg2Cl2 in the former but in latter HgS was the major compound.
11. One-time oral administration of PCM produced notable toxicity only at very high doses (hundred times that of therapeutic dose) and was found to be completely safe up to twenty-seven times that of therapeutic dose in female
animals.
12. On continuous administration for a period of Twenty-eight days, PCM was found to be safe at therapeutic dose in male and female animals. Though mortality was seen at 8th day in one among the 10 male animals administered with five times that of therapeutic dose, female animals didn’t show any lethal effects.Repeated administration of ten times that of therapeutic dose caused mortality in both male and female animals from fourth day.
13. A clear disparity is seen between male and female animals in mortality rate with male death three times more when compared with female animals. This disparity could be attributed to the influence of sex in expression of OAT 1 & OAT 2 in the renal cell membrane or direct influence of sex hormones.
14. All the animals that died during the course of study showed neurotoxic or musculo-toxic symptoms, whereas the animals that survived the complete course of study showed nephrotoxic symptoms. Upregulation of major inflammatory markers, ICAM-1 and VCAM-1 in kidney and spleen confirmed the active inflammation in both spleen and kidney of high dose administered anima
