Croton caudatus geiseler toxicity evaluation in swiss albino mice transplanted or not with dalton’s lymphoma ascite tumor before exposure to 6 gy γ-radiation

Radiotherapy is one of the important modalities to treat malignant diseases. Radiotherapy alone is not enough to control tumor therefore, it is usually combined with other modalities to treat difficult neoplasia in the clinical condition. Radiotherapy is usually combined with chemotherapeutic agents to get better response and cure rates in patients.1 Despite the fact that radiotherapy is used to treat approximately 50% tumors, the induction of radiotoxicity in the normal cells remains the major limiting factor.2 The curative effects of irradiation are temporary and are highly localized to the irradiated area. It is well known that irradiation causes long term adverse side effects on body’s healthy normal tissues. The radiotherapy usually leads to tiredness, feeling of run down, sore throat, difficulty in swallowing, cough, hair loss, chest pain, increased body, temperature, shivering, sick feeling and sore skin.3 Radiotherapy uses high-energy Xor γrays to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors. Ionizing radiations belong to electromagnetic radiation category, and their wavelength is very short that make them highly effective. The major cell killing effect of radiotherapy is brought by causing various types of DNA damages and in particular DNA double strand breaks in cells.4 This indicates that tumor shall be made more vulnerable to radiation so as to spare the normal cells. Combination chemotherapy or chemoradiotherapy has been tried to treat difficult neopalsia and several combinations of chemotherapeutic drugs are used as cancer treatment regimens.5The combination chemoradiotherapy is also utilized in an attempt to increase the effectiveness and reduce the radiotoxicity in the patients by lowering the dose of the agent/s.6 Traditionally Croton caudatus Geiseler (family Euphorbiaceae) or kam-sabut has been utilized to treat several disorders including sprains, fever and liver diseases in the northeastern part of India. Its roots have been found to be purgative and it has low toxicity.7The leaves are applied on festering wounds of injured cattles and to ward off against the maggots. Our earlier studies have shown that kam-sabut acts as an antioxidant at low doses.8 Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine various biochemical lesions induced by kam-sabut in the liver and kidney of Dalton’s lymphoma transplanted mice following exposure to 6 Gy γradiation.