Studies on the contributive effects of the different constituents of cow's urine concoction in rats (Part II).

The effects of cow's urine concoction (CUPR) with cow's urine as the diluting medium and of the same concoction with distilled water as the diluting medium (CUPRw), together with each of the constituents in both media were assessed on such parameters as reaction to spinal cord reflexes e.g. startle, nociception and righting, limb abduction, locomotor anomaly and limb paralysis. The basic procedure involved eliciting the spinal reflexes under the influence of the concoction and its constituents and recording the presence or absence of the reflexes. In addition, the accompanying musculoskeletal defects were recorded. The results showed that the CUPR affected all the parameters positively while the CUPRw also had positive effects on the parameters with the exception of response to startle reflex. It was tobacco leave alone that gave appreciable results on all the parameters, suggesting that it is the active ingredient. Cow's urine alone gave no appreciable results, neither did the administration of some other constituents of the concoction in distilled water or cow's urine affected the parameters appreciably. As was observed for convulsion in our previous report, there seems to be an interaction between the constituents of the concoction as far as effects on righting reflex were concerned. No interaction seems to result on the observations for the startle reflex and musculoskeletal observations. There was also a qualitative difference between the concoction in the two media on righting reflex. While CUPR caused a loss of righting reflex at 3 ml/kg body weight and above, CUPRw at doses twice as high did not affect the righting reflex.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)