Yafteh

Background: Medicinal smoke has been in natural health products by many nations all over the worlds. Dung's smoke called "Anbar Nasara" is one of the most used medicinal smokes in Iranian traditional medicine. Anber Nasara has been administered as inhalation in the treatment of viral or bacterial infections as well as for tumors and cysts in vaginal diseases in women. Its cytotoxic effects have been proposed in these studies. Materials and Methods: Dung's of female donkey have been collected from Shahreza, Isfahan province in summer 2011. The samples were burned in a specially designed apparatus and its smoke was collected in n-hexane solvent over ice-cold water. Solvent was evaporated in the air and dried residue was dissolved in DMSO and diluted in RPMI So that the final concentrations of 0.4, 0.3, 0.25, 0.2, 0.125, 0.1, 0.0625, 0.0312 mg/ml were obtained for MTT assay as a cytotoxic evaluation method against two cancer cells (KB and Hela) and a normal one (L929). After 48h incubation percent cell survival and IC50 values were obtained using ELISA plate reader at 540nm. Results: Results showed that dung's smoke were cytotoxic in tested concentrations against cancer cell lines in a dose dependent manner. The IC50 was calculated ≥ 0.2 mg/ml. Conclusion: Dung's smoke consists of too many constituents and its cytotoxic effect may belong to one or complexes of constituents. More researches are under way to clarify these aspects of the study.