Background: Diabetes is a chronic metabolic serious health problem that affecting different organs in the body as spleen. It led to a decrease in immune function.
Aim: The present study compared between the effect of two herbal extracts ginger and Echinacea on their immunomoduolatory role on experimentally induced diabetes.
Materials and Methods: 45 adult male rats were used in the study. They were divided into 2 groups. Control group(group I): included 15 animals and group II included 30 animals and were divided into 3 subgroups 10 animals each. subgroup IIa: diabetic group: received a single intraperitoneal injection of streptozotocin 70 mg/kg dissolved in cold saline solution, subgroup II b: diabetic treated with echinacia daily 100mg/kg for 60 days orally by gastric gavage and subgroup IIc: diabetic treated with ginger 500mg/kg for 60 days orally by gastric gavage. At the end of experiment animals were sacrificied,spleen was dissected and processed for light,electron microscopic study and immunohistochemistry. Morphometric study and statistical analysis were done for the percentage area of collagen fibers and number of positive celeaved caspase 3 cells.
Results: Diabetes led to marked atrophied white pulp and statistically significant increase in the number of cleaved caspase-3 positive cells as well as the area percentage of collagen fibers in the spleen. Echinacea treated group red pulp contain numerous acidophilic cells with vesicular nuclei in between the splenic lymphocytes as well as congested dilated blood sinusoids.. The lymphocytes were more or less similar to those in the control group. Ginger treated group exhibited marked improvement in the splenic architecture. There were significant decrease in both cleaved caspase-3 positive cells and area percentage of collagen fibers that was marked in ginger group.
Conclusion: We conc