Antigenotoxicity Screening of Coffee (Coffea arabica Linn) and Cacao (Theobroma cacao Linn.)

This study evaluated the potential antigenotoxicity of coffee and cacao against tetracycline-induced genotoxicity in Swiss albino mice. Laid out on a Completely Randomized Design, eight treatments replicated three times were randomly distributed to 24 caged mice. The experimental treatments were as follows: Treatment 0, Pure distilled water (Negative control); Treatment 1, Roasted coffee plus tetracycline; Treatment 2, Unroasted coffee plus tetracycline; Treatment 3, Instant coffee plus tetracycline; Treatment 4, Roasted cacao plus tetracycline; Treatment 5, Unroasted cacao plus tetracycline; Treatment 6, Instant cacao plus tetracycline; Treatment 7, Tetracycline (Positive control). Micronucleus test was used to assess the inhibitory effect of coffee and cacao prepared extracts. DMRT was used to assess the significant differences among treatment means while Dunnett’s test was used to compare experimental treatments against positive and negative controls. ANOVA showed significant differences among treatments at 5% level of significance. Unroasted coffee possessed the highest antigenotoxic potential while instant coffee had the least among the coffee extracts. In contrast, instant cocoa had the highest antigenotoxic potential while unroasted cocoa had the least among the cocoa extracts. Both coffee and cacao extracts are effective in significantly reducing (p<0.05) the formation of micronuclei in polychromatic erythrocytes of the tetracycline-treated albino mice.

Keywords-Antigenotoxicity, tetracycline, mutagenic, genotoxins