• Advances in Traditional Medicine
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.90-99
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• 2003

There are several data in the literature indicating a great variety of pharmacological activities of Polypodium genus, which exhibit antiinflammatory and immunomodulatory activities. Since one of our main interests is to obtain natural immunoregulatory agents devoid of pharmacological adverse effects, we used flow cytometry analysis to highlight relative contributions of a water-soluble fraction of different concentrations of Polypodium rhizome extracts on lymphocyte subpopulations, NK and LAK activity. To measure their potential immunoregulatory activity a T cell proliferation assay in response to phytohemaglutinin (PHA) and mixed lymphocyte reactions were chosen. As a confirmatory bioassay we studied the effect of our extracts on CD45RO and CD95 antigen expressions. The results indicate that CD95 expression dramatically increases after peripheral blood lymphocyte activation and treatment with Polypodium leucotomus, cambricum and vulgare extracts, suggesting a powerful intrinsic pro-apoptotic effect.