Protective effects of Peganum harmala extracts on thiourea-induced diseases in adult male rat.

Cancers and hepatoprotective prevention using traditional medicines have attracted increasing interest. The aim of our study was to characterize the putative protective effects of ethanol and chloroform extracts of Peganum harmala on thiourea-induced diseases in adult male rat. We seek to determine the effects of these plant extracts on body weight, thyroid and endocrine cancer parameters. In addition the putative hepatoprotective effect was checked by the determination of aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) activities and the bilirubin level in the blood. Our data show that ethanol and chloroform extracts of Peganum harmala protected the animal against the carcinogenic effects induced by thiourea since neuron-specific enolase (NSE) and thyroglobulin (TG) levels were back to the normal range. In addition, the observed-hepatocytotoxicity after thiourea treatment was greatly reduced (AST and ALT activities were respectively 270 IU/l and 60 IU/l and in the same order of magnitude as in the untreated rats) as well as the bilirubin levels (6 micromol/l) especially for animals receiving the choroform preparation. Therefore we may suggest that extracts of Peganum harmala are efficient to reduce the toxicity induced by thiourea in male rat as far as the above parameters are concerned.

Liver adenomatosis with granulomas in two patients on long-term oral contraceptives.

We report two cases of liver cell adenomatosis associated with granulomatous hepatitis, both developed in white women (52 and 39 years of age) on long-term oral contraceptives (for 18 and 12 years, respectively). The first patient underwent surgery for five hepatic tumors 1-7 cm in diameter; the other patient had a partial segmentectomy for a 4-cm hepatic nodule of the right lobe. In both cases, dissection of the liver showed many other diffuse and smaller nodules. Histologically, all tumors were benign liver cell adenomas, with cellular atypia in the largest tumor and associated in both cases with granulomatous hepatitis, with numerous noncaseating epithelioid and giant cell granulomas located either only in the tumors (case 1) or diffusely in the tumoral and nontumoral hepatic parenchyma (case 2). During follow-up, ultrasound showed new nodular lesions in case 2, whereas in case 1 evolution was uneventful. In estroprogestative-associated liver diseases, adenomas are common, but adenomatosis and granulomas are rare. An association of these latter two conditions would seem to be exceptional. The prognosis for adenomatosis remains uncertain.