A Review: Understanding the Impact of Cancer During the Search of Safe and Affordable Medicinal Plants. A Need for In Vivo Investigation for the Safety Aspect of Asparagus Laricinus?

The understanding of the initiation, progression, and predictions about the burden of cancer are of importance during the scientific race for the discovery of much safer and cheap medicinal plants. The world population mostly relies on medicinal plants for the treatment of infections and diseases due to ongoing economic constraints and growing poverty. This review study seeks to establish the what the literature reported and the true extent to which Asparagus laricinus is being studied for safe use. Studies indicate how cancer spreads and affects the different organs in the body. Most studies on medicinal plants are performed invitro with few concentrating to in vivo due to ethical requirements during the use of animal rats. Literature does not reveal any previous toxicological studiesafor Asparagus laricinus per se in vivo, but several studies were performed on other medicinal plants used for the treatment of cancer. The safety aspects certain palnts were established for example Moringa oleifera and Lithocarpus dealbata were found to have no mortality or any visible signs of acute toxicity, while serum biochemistry tests did not reveal any noticeable changes in aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), cholesterol (CHOL) and protein levels in animals. While in vivo showed high dose of toxicological studies on Moringa oleifera have indicated to cause severe hepatotoxicity and organ damage. The acute lethality (LD50) test has been found to be relatively safe with subchronic toxicity studies, eliciting no significant difference in sperm quality, haematological and biochemical parameters in the treated rats, as compared to the controls . Both studies engaged the use of laboratory experimental animal models to evaluate the toxicology of plant extracts. With the growing interest in the use of Asparagus laricinus in Botswana, South Africa, Lesotho and Swaziland for the treatment of infections and diseases, there is a need to correlate the published data with the in vivo data which is very scares current.