Comparative Effect of "Pestox" Powdered Insecticide on both Serum Aspartate Aminotransferase and Alanine Aminotransferase of Male and Female Albino Rats

Pestox insecticide, whose active ingredient is cypermethrin - a synthetic pyrethroid that belongs to a group of insecticidal used widely as an industrial and agricultural pesticide is a product of Three Point Industry Limited, Lagos State, Nigeria. The present study was designed to investigate the toxicity of pestox on freshly collected blood from male and female rats. The different experimental group of rats were exposed to different concentrations of the test sample (1%, 5%, 10% and 15%) for 21 days. The activities of some liver enzyme markers such as aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransferase (ALT) from hepatocyte to serum were determined throughout the analysis. The activities of AST and ALT did not significantly increase (P>0.05) in female rats during the first and second weeks of the experimental analysis. Whereas at the third week, only ALT activity in serum was observed to increase significantly (P<0.05) at 5%, 10% and 15% concentration. For the male rats, the activities of AST and ALT significantly increased (P<0.05) in serum at 5%, 10% and 15% concentrations in the first week but only the activities of ALT increased significantly (P<0.05) in serum at both second and third week at sublethal dose of 15% concentration. The results obtained suggest that the test sample has some toxic effect on both male and female rats hepatocytes using a contaminated-diet and the toxicity effect of the test sample is both concentration and time-dependent. However, the male rats showed higher level of toxicity effect compared with the female rat group at different concentration (1%, 5%, 10% and 15%).