The objective of this study was to determine the possible teratogenic effects of Prosopis juliflora, check if there is a loss in toxicity between pods stored and newly collected and determine whether there are differences in toxicity between the pods collected in different localities. Thirty pregnant female Wistar rats were randomly separated into five groups: a control (G1) and four experimental (G2, G3, G4 and G5), each with six animals. The animals in groups G2 and G3 were fed diets containing 70% of pods of P. juliflora newly collected in two different municipalities. The groups G4 and G5 were fed beans prepared with the same origins, but stored for a period of 6 months. The control group received the same diet without pods of P. juliflora. In the control group the number of defects per litter (1.16 ± 0.98) was significantly lower than the experimental groups (14.00 ± 2.96, 6.16 ± 2.22, 7.66 ± 2.94 and 4.66 ± 1.63 for G2, G3, G4 and G5, respectively) indicating that the plant is teratogenic. No significant differences were observed in the frequency of malformations and number of fetuses born between groups receiving pods from different locations. However, the number of defects in the groups who received the freshly harvested pods was significantly different from the number observed in rats that received the beans after storage, suggesting that the teratogenic effect of the plant decreases during storage. We conclude that the pods of P. juliflora are teratogenic for Wistar rats and that the teratogenicity decreases with storage.
Poisonous plants; Prosopis juliflora; algaroba; Wistar rats; teratogenesis; plant poisoning
