Wound Healing Activity of Rubus sanctus Schreber (Rosaceae): Preclinical Study in Animal Models

Abstract

Young shoots of Rubus species have been used for healing of wounds, infected insect bites and pimples in folk medicine for ages. In order to evaluate the wound healing activity of Rubus sanctus, four different extracts were prepared from the whole aerial parts of the plant by using n-hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate and methanol, respectively. Incision wound healing model by using tensiometer on rats and excision model on mice were employed to assess the activity. Remarkable wound healing activity was observed with the ointment formulation of the methanol extract at 1% concentration on the mentioned models. The results of histopathological examination also supported the outcome of both incision and excision wound models. The wound healing effect was comparatively evaluated with a reference ointment Madecassol. The experimental data confirmed the ethnobotanical usage of R. sanctus.

Figure 1

Effects of the extracts from R. sanctus on excision wound model.

Figure 2

Effects of the extracts from R. sanctus on linear incision wound model. N: Newton.

Figure 3

Histopathological view of wound healing and epidermal/dermal re-modeling in the vehicle, negative control, R. sanctus extracts and Madecassol administered animals. Skin sections show the hematoxylin & eosin (HE) stained epidermis and dermis in (a) and the dermis stained with Van Gieson's (VG) and toluidine blue (TB) in (b) and (c) respectively. The original magnification was 40× and the scale bars represent 25 μm for figures in (a), and the original magnification was 400× and the scale bars represent 100 μm for both (b) and (c). Data are representative of six animal per group. (i) Vehicle group, 10 days old wound tissue treated with only vehicle, (ii) negative c ontrol group (untreated), 10 days old wound tissue (iii) n-hexane extract group, 10 days old wound tissue treated with n-hexane extract, (iv) chloroform extract group, 10 days old wound tissue treated with chloroform extract, (v) ethyl acetate extract group, 10 days old wound tissue treated with ethyl acetate extract, (vi) methanol extract group, 10 days old wound tissue treated with methanol extract and (vi) Madecassol group, 10 day old wound tissue treated with Madecassol.

Figure 4

Hypothetical diagram of the wound healing mechanism of methanolic extract of R. sanctus