Abstract
Uhwangchungsimwon(UC) is widely used as a herbal medicine on various circulatory disorders in Korea. The objective of this investigation was to characterize the acute, subacute hepatotoxic potency of orally administered UC in rats. In the acute and short-term studies, male rats of 150~170g were gavaged with 0, 7.5 g/kg once daily for up to 1, 5, 10 consecutive days. No differences in body weight, serum enzyme activities, absolute and relative liver weight and histopathological examination on liver between control and UC-fed groups were found. In the subacute study, UC was administered orally to both sexes of rats for 30 days(0, 1.875, 3.75 or 7.5 g/kg/day). There were no-doserelated hepatotoxic signs of general symptoms, body weight gain, water consumption and serum biochemical analysis. Slight decreases of food consumption observed at 3.75 and 7.5 g/kg groups of both sexes were due to be full of UC fed. Gross necropsy and histopathology revealed no evidence of hepatotoxicity related to UC. Our data indicate that hepatotoxicity was not caused by administration of UC up to 7.5 g/kg/dayfor 30 days in rats.