Revista Médica UCR
This study was designed to investigate the cardiovascular effect of different extracts from Marila laxiflora and Marila pluricostata, which belong to Marila genus.
On aortic rings from Sprague-Dawley male rats (250-270g) contracted by phenylephrine (PE 1X10-6 M) all extracts assayed, induced a concentration-dependent relaxation, however dichloromethanic extract from leaves of Marila pluricostata (H-CH2Cl2) showed the higher vasorelaxant effect (95.60± 2.40%) while the methanolic extract from M. laxiflora (R-MeOH) reached an effect of 63.49 ± 3.07%.
In other experiments, our group has investigated the hypotensive activity of a single dose (150 mg/Kg) by intraperitoneal administration of extracts with higher vasorelaxant effect using tail-cuff technique in unanesthetized spontaneous hypertensive rats.
Extracts from M. laxiflora caused a poor hypotensive effect during first hour, while extracts from M. pluricostata showed a significative hypotensive response which was observed until six hours after administration.
On pharmacological point of view, our results have suggested that chemical compounds present on extracts from Marila genus plants could have an interesting profile of cardiovascular activity.
The still necessary use of animals in physiology instruction requires an adequate attitude by students. Until now there’s no information on the way medicine students perceive the use of animals in their courses. The main objective of this study was to measure that perception on a group of medicine students from the Universidad de Costa Rica.
A questionnaire on students’ personal information, their expertise or previous information on use of animals and their knowledge on final disposition of animals was applied.
At moment of enquiry 98% of students (n=88) already had used animals in some academic activity; despite 73% of them knew the existence of regulations on the use of animals only between 2-36% knew where the animals came from or where did they go after they were used. Finally, regardless 89% of the students thought that the use of animals provides some benefit to their learning they also saw such a practice with no advantages or with disadvantages. It is recommended the use of alternative methods as substitution or complement of animals in physiology teaching.