Traditional Tongan cures for morning sickness and their mutagenic/toxicological evaluations

Every year millions of women become pregnant, and more than 60% of them wil l develop some form of morning sickness. Yet drugs like Thalidomide, Bendec tin and other possibly potent teratogens administered for pre-partum nausea have severely limited any medicinal intervention. In Tonga, women have bee n treated for morning sickness for hundreds of years. Two types of traditio nal treatments exist, the first one consists of an infusion of fresh leaves , commonly called vai momoko. The second type of treatment is called vai ha ka, which is made from the boiled bark of several trees. In this paper we d escribe the results of 6 months of intensive interviews in Tongs regarding the second type of treatment called vai haka. In addition, we tested vai ha ka for mutagenic and teratogenic effects. Data from the Ames TA-98 mutageni c bioassay clearly indicate that vai haka is not mutagenic with or without S-9 activation. Twenty-six experimental CD-1 white mice were gavaged with 0 .1 ml of vai haka (at 540 x the human dose) while the control group of 17 m ice were gavaged with 0.1 mi of water to determine teratogenic and developm ental effects of the vai haka. No significant teratogenic or developmental anomalies occurred in the mice dosed with vai haka compared to the controls . (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.