Agroclavine is a natural, clavine type of ergot
alkaloid with D1
dopamine and a-
adrenoceptor agonistic properties. We showed previously that in vitro
agroclavine enhances natural killer (NK) cell activity, increases
interleukin-2 and
interferon-gamma production and prolongs the survival time of
tumor-bearing mice. The aim of this study was 1) to test the effect of
agroclavine on NK activity in vivo, and 2) to assess the potential toxicity of high doses of
agroclavine on cardiac and liver functions using
creatine kinase MB (CKMB) and
alanine aminotransferase (ALT) as
biochemical markers in normal and stressed animals. The effect of stress was studied because we examined promising anticancer properties of
agroclavine and malignant diseases are supposed to be a potent stressful event for patients. In our experiments 3-month-old male rats of the Wistar-Kyoto strain were used.
Agroclavine was injected intraperitoneally (0.5 mg/kg or 0.05 mg/kg) 30 min before stress (four hours' restraint and immersion in 23 degrees C water). The animals were killed 30 min after stress, blood was collected and the spleen was removed. Non-stressed animals treated with
agroclavine were killed 5 h after the
drug administration. The results confirmed our previous in vitro results and showed that also in vivo
agroclavine increases NK cell activity under non-stress conditions.
Agroclavine only slightly increased CKMB and had no influence on ALT in non-stressed animals. These promising results are limited by the fact that
agroclavine (0.5 mg/kg) diminished NK cell activity and significantly increased ALT and CKMB under stress conditions.