Abstract
Pulicaria genus belongs to the family Compositae. Some species of this genus have been used in traditional Arab medicine as antispasmodic agent. In this study the Pulicaria glutinosa, which is a wild growing shrub in Saudi Arabia have been explored for developmental toxicity using zebrafish embryos. The fractionated crude extract showed diverse biological activity as methanol fraction exhibited highest antioxidant activity (IC50 12.2 +/- 0.27%) followed by chloroform fraction (18.1 +/- 0.36%), while hexane fraction did not show any antioxidant activity. Treating zebrafish (Dania rerio) embryos with fractionated extracts of Pulicaria glutinosa revealed that hexane fraction induced severe neurotoxicity in growing zebrafish embryos even at very low concentrations (5 mu g/ml), while methanol fraction which had highest antioxidant activity did not produce any teratogenic profile even at 100 mu g/ml. This is the first report to evaluate the fresh leaves of Pulicaria glutinosa for antimicrobial, antioxidant activity and developmental toxicity in zebrafish embryos