Eur J Anat, 23 (6): 405-413 (2019)

Parsley against nicotine toxicity

Shymaa Mohamed Amer El-fiky1, Hanaa Zakaria Nooh¹, Gehan Farouk AliEl-Akabawy^2,1, Noha Mohey Issa¹

¹Department of Anatomy and Embryology, Faculty of Medicine, Menoufia University, Menoufia, Egypt²Department of Basic Sciences, College of Medicine, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, Riyadh, KSA

ABSTRACT Nicotine exposure during pregnancy is linked to multiple obstetrical, fetal, and developmental com-plications. Parsley (Petroselinum crispum) is an aromatic herb, which has well-known potent anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative effects. The pur-pose of this study was to investigate, for the first time, the protective effect of parsley extract on al-veolar stage of lung development in rats exposed to perinatal nicotine. Thirty Sprague-Dawley adult female rats were randomly divided into five main groups after being pregnant: control, sham control, parsley-treated (5mg /kg/day), nicotine-treated group (1mg /kg/day), and protected (nicotine + parsley extract) groups. Nicotine was injected sub-cutaneously, while parsley extract was given orally by gastric tube from the 7th day of pregnancy until the 21st day postnatally. At the end of the experi-ment, lungs of 21-day-old male offspring were sub-jected to biochemical, histological, and immuno-histochemical analyses. Our results revealed toxic effects of nicotine on alveolar stage of rat lung de-velopment. These were indicated by histopatholog-ical alterations, including poorly developed primary and secondary septa; interstitial tissue infiltration with inflammatory cells, atypical features appeared in some cells of bronchioles and blood vessels. In addition, a reduction in elastic fibers contents and in alpha smooth muscle expression, an increase in surfactant protein B expression, and changes of oxidative stress indices and tumor necrosis factor alpha level in lung tissue were detected. Co-administration of parsley extract ameliorated nicoti-ne-induced toxic alterations on the development of the lung. Therefore, parsley can be a promising candidate for the prevention of nicotine-induced toxicity in the developing lung.

Keywords: Antioxidant â?? Secondary septation â?? Alveolar myofibroblast â?? Lung â?? Nicotine