Immunomodulatory and Antioxidant Activities of Select Indonesian Vegetables, Herbs, and Spices on Human Lymphocytes

Edible plants have attracted increasing attention as functional foods as they are rich in bioactive compounds with health benefits, including antioxidant and immunomodulatory activities. However, scientific evidence of these health effects is limited. This study is aimed at determining antioxidant and immunomodulatory activities of 25 select vegetables, herbs, and spices commonly consumed in Indonesia. Phytochemical profiles were determined by measuring total flavonoid content and 1H-NMR. Human blood lymphocyte cells were used to probe the immunomodulatory potency and treated with the methanol extract of these vegetables, herbs, and spices. The results showed the enhanced propensity for all tested plant extracts to stimulate lymphocyte proliferation, except Pandanus amaryllifolius. Etlingera elatior, Ocimum xcitriodorum, Kaempferia galanga, and Apium graveolens had the highest lymphocyte cell proliferation stimulation index (SI) at concentrations of 41.67, 16.67, 4.17, and 2.5 mg/mL culture, respectively (SI 2.21 ± 0.05 , 2.62 ± 0.12 , 3 ± 0.05 , and 2.64 ± 0.07 , respectively). The NMR spectra of these four most potent plants showed low peaks in the aromatic/phenolic area and several other peaks indicating the presence of terpenoid, steroid, amino acid, and sugar compounds. The results demonstrate the immunomodulatory potential of all vegetables, herbs, and spices, except P. amaryllifolius, although this potential did not necessarily correlate with flavonoid content and antioxidant activity. Nevertheless, this research showed promising health effect, particularly immunomodulation, of the various local plants. Further elaboration on the specific immunomodulatory activity will be interesting.

Uncovering Proximity of Chromosome Territories using Classical Algebraic Statistics

Exchange type chromosome aberrations (ETCAs) are rearrangements of the genome that occur when chromosomes break and the resulting fragments rejoin with fragments from other chromosomes or from other regions within the same chromosome. ETCAs are commonly observed in cancer cells and in cells exposed to radiation. The frequency of these chromosome rearrangements is correlated with their spatial proximity, therefore it can be used to infer the three dimensional organization of the genome. Extracting statistical significance of spatial proximity from cancer and radiation data has remained somewhat elusive because of the sparsity of the data. We here propose a new approach to study the three dimensional organization of the genome using algebraic statistics. We test our method on a published data set of irradiated human blood lymphocyte cells. We provide a rigorous method for testing the overall organization of the genome, and in agreement with previous results we find a random relative positioning of chromosomes with the exception of the chromosome pairs {1,22} and {13,14} that have a significantly larger number of ETCAs than the rest of the chromosome pairs suggesting their spatial proximity. We conclude that algebraic methods can successfully be used to analyze genetic data and have potential applications to larger and more complex data sets.

Study the effect of Interaction between metronidazole and Pelargonium odoratissimum aquatic extracts in vivo and in vitro on mammalian cells

The present study was designed to investigate the role of P. odoratissimum aquatic extracts in reducing the genotoxic effects of metronidazole in mice in vivo and human blood lymphocyte in vitro. The parametrers which evaluated in mice were used: mitotic index and chromosomal aberrations in bone marrow, while for human blood lymphocyte were mitotic index, blast index, replicative index, sister chromatid exchange and chromosomal aberrations. The cytogenetic effects of the drug and plant aquatic extracts were investigated after four days of oral administration for mice with metronidazole and aqueous extract at doses 400mg/kg and 100 mg/kg respectively while the concentrations of metronidazole and aqueous extract in human blood lymphocyte culture was 80µg/ml, and 10µg/ml respectively. An interaction study of plant extract with metronidazole was carried out through three types of treatments (before, after and mixture of plant extract and drug treatment) to determine the activity of P. odoratissimum aqueous extract in reducing the side effects of drug both in vitro and in vivo. Aquatic extract of P.odoratissimum at the concentration of 10µg/ml, showed a protective value against the genotoxic effect of metronidazole at 80µg/ml. concentration .In mouse bone marrow cells and human blood lymphocyte culture, this was more pronounced in pre-treatment and simultaneous treatment than in post-treatment. So P. odoratissimum aquatic extract is considered as desmutagen in the first order and bioantimutagen in the second order, as a result for its ability to repair CA and increase MI in mouse system and in human blood lymphocyte culture system . It also had the ability to increase BI and RI and decrease SCE in human blood lymphocytes culture in vitro.