Hepatoprotective activity of Allophyllus serratus

The liver is the major site of xenobiotic metabolism and excretion. Liver injury caused by xenobiotics such as toxic chemicals drugs herbal products environmental chemicals and virus infiltration from ingestion or infection represents the leading cause of acute liver failure .The toxins absorbed from the intestinal tract gain access first to the liver resulting in a variety of liver ailments. Thus liver diseases remain one of the serious health problems. Drugs have been estimated to cause around 15-20% of all cases of fulminant and 10% of all cases of sub-fulminant in Western countries and 10% of all cases in Japan. Traditionally various plants are being used to treat hepatic patients. It is believed that herbal medicine has little side effects as well as it requires no cost in few cases. Allophylus serratus has been claimed to be contain flavanoids useful in hepatotoxicity . Hence the aim is to evaluate the methanolic extract of bark of Allophylus serratus for its hepatoprotective activity against CCL4 induced hepatotoxicity in rats.