Abstract
It has been widely recognized that solanine (Fig. 1) is contained in Solarium species, especially in fresh potato sprouts as a toxic alkaloid. There have been reports concerning sola n i ne, namely, Kline et al. (1) reported that potato sprouts were shown to be toxic to pregnant rats when fed at a level of 10% of the diet. Solanine and solanidine, aglycon of solanine, inhibit human plasma cholinesterase in vitro (2, 3). No other pharmacological and biochemical studies on toxicities of solanine have been published. The present investigation was undertaken to determine the alteration of blood sugar level of rat treated with solanine. Hyperglycemia has been reported as one feature of poisoning by some toxic substances, i.e., guthion (4), paracetamol (5), parathion (6) and amphetamine (7). It seemed possible, therefore, that changes of disturbance of carbohydrate metabolism.
