Toxicity studies of Acacia nilotica (L.): A review of the published scientific literature

---

Introduction: Acacia nilotica is a valuable plant with medicinal properties that increasingly incites the curiosity of many researchers. Its pharmacological properties are reported in many studies, but the fact remains that the plant can be just as toxic as any modern pharmaceutical drug. It is very important to dispose sufficient knowledge on what are reported concerning its toxicity profile. This review is aimed to provide comprehensive summary (all-in-one) of what have been reported about the toxicity of A. nilotica and to determine the necessity or not to conduct more toxicological studies in a further step toward rationalizing its medicinal use.Methods: Scientific information about the toxicity and or safety of A. nilotica reported elsewhere were reviewed. Search engines such as Google, Bing and Baidu and databases of scientific journals such as PubMed, Scopus, CAS, CABI, HINARI and AJOL were used to retrieve studies from 1999 to 2017.Results: Few studies have reported the toxicity potential of A. nilotica and most with very limited information. Three of them have reported serious deleterious toxic effects of certain parts of the plant on major organ systems such as kidney and liver. Stem bark as part of A. nilotica appeared to be the most cited to cause observable clinical signs of toxicity and organs lesions.Conclusion: Overall, this review provided comprehensive information on what is known about the toxicity of A. nilotica and showed the necessity to conduct more advanced long-term-based toxicological studies.