Evaluation of Histopathological Effects of Smoked Marijuana on Albino Rats and Its Oxidative Stress Indices

Abstract

Smoking marijuana (cannabis Savita), a psychoactive substance may result in side effect on living cells of the system and oxidative stress may meditate some of these effects. This study aims to evaluate the acute and chronic histopathological effect on wistar albino rat as well as oxidative stress indices and some of the haematological parameters evaluation. This study was conducted at the animal house of Ebonyi State University, Presco campus Abakaliki. The experimental animals were share into control group, acute  and chronic administered group which was housed in the temperature and humidity controlled facility of 22°C+1, standard laboratory mice chow diet with tap water freely available at ad libitum to the animals. The weight of the male wistar albino rat were taken twice daily which range from 150g to 200g after which was exposed to smoke of burnt wrapped 2mg of marijuana morning and evening for 21 days for experimental animals in group B and 42 days for group C animals respectively. The acute histopathological effect and that of chronic of the lungs of smoked marijuana wistar albino rat displayed histomorphological changes with Haematoxylin and Eosin, methanamine silver staining and  phosphotungstic acid staining method when compared with the control lung sections that shows normal histomorphological pattern with the present of alveolar pneumocytes and alveolar space. Evaluation of the lungs of smoked marijuana rat shows increased MDA and decreased level of CAT, SOD, GSH and GPx but examining some of the haematological parameters show elevated Twbc and platelet while packed cell volume decreased the level as compared with control animals. I hereby concluded that marijuana smoked is a potent source of cellular oxidative stress that contributes significantly to cellular injury, dysfunction, and pulmonary edema as well as histomorphological changes from the lungs of marijuana smokers and disorder in some of the haematological parameters.