Toxicity study of Bidens pilosa in animals

Yu-Chuan Liang; Chuan-Ju Lin; Cheng-Ying Yang; Yung-Hsiang Chen; Meng-Ting Yang; Fu-Shiuan Chou; Wen-Chin Yang; Cicero Lee-Tian Chang

doi:10.1016/j.jtcme.2019.04.002

Toxicity study of Bidens pilosa in animals

J Tradit Complement Med. 2019 Apr 29;10(2):150-157. doi: 10.1016/j.jtcme.2019.04.002. eCollection 2020 Mar.

Authors

Yu-Chuan Liang¹, Chuan-Ju Lin¹, Cheng-Ying Yang², Yung-Hsiang Chen¹, Meng-Ting Yang^{1

3

4}, Fu-Shiuan Chou¹, Wen-Chin Yang^{1

3

4

5

6

7}, Cicero Lee-Tian Chang²

Affiliations

¹ Agricultural Biotechnology Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.
² Department of Veterinary Medicine, National Chung-Hsing University, Taiwan.
³ Institute of Biotechnology, National Chung-Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan.
⁴ Molecular and Biological Agricultural Sciences, Taiwan International Graduate Program, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, and National Chung-Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan.
⁵ Department of Life Sciences, National Chung-Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan.
⁶ Department of Aquaculture, National Taiwan Ocean University, Taiwan.
⁷ Institute of Biotechnology, National Taiwan University, Taiwan.

Abstract

Bidens pilosa (BP) is an edible Asteraceae plant found worldwide that has traditionally been used as food without noticeable side effects. BP has also been used as an herbal medicine to treat over 41 categories of disease in humans and animals. However, to date no long-term toxicity study of BP has been conducted in animals. In this study, 24-week oral toxicity of BP at doses of 0%, 0.5%, 2.5%, 5% and 10% of food was investigated in mice. Mortality, body weight, organ weight, food intake, water consumption, hematology, serum biochemistry, urinalysis, genotoxicity and organ histopathology of animals of both sexes were analyzed. No significant difference in the above parameters was observed between control and BP-fed mice except that body weight and food intake in those fed with 10% BP were significantly less than controls. In addition, similar results were seen in chickens fed with BP for 28 days. Collectively, the data demonstrate that BP has no adverse effects in mice and chickens at dose of 5% or less of food.

Keywords: Adverse effect; Asteraceae; Chronic toxicity; Mice; Mortality.