The immunosuppressive effects of Agyrolobium roseum and pinitol in experimental animals

Argyrolobium roseum (Papilionaceae) is a sexually reproducing, rare, annual herb that grows in tropical and sub-temperate tracts of the north-western Himalayan region of the Indian subcontinent. The present investigation was carried out to study the immunomodulatory properties of this herb in well established experimental models. For preliminary pharmacological activity evaluation, we first studied the effect of aqueous fraction (KA-134) of A. roseum on humoral and cell mediated immune responses and found that KA-134 dose dependently suppressed the antibody titre and delayed type hypersensitivity reaction. Inspired by the results, we further fractionated KA-134 which yielded pinitol, which on further immunomodulatory studies resulted in highly significant inhibition of CD3, CD19, CD4 and CD8 count and Th1/Th2 cytokines expression in splenocytes. Pinitol was also found to be safe when tested against cell viability assays (in vitro and in vivo). Based on the data, it can be suggested that pinitol is a potent and non-toxic immunosuppressor, which can be further explored for the development of potent immunosuppressor. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.