Activity of fennel fruit extract (foeniculum vulgare mill.) on uterine of immature wistar female rat: Aktivitas ekstrak buah adas (foeniculum vulgare mill.) terhadap uterin tikus wistar betina yang belum dewasa

Fennel fruit (Foeniculum vulgare Mill.) is one of traditional plant medicine known having
eff ects as anti-infl ammatory, analgesic and antioxidant. It also has been reputed to increase milk
secretion, promote menstruation, facilitate birth, alleviates the symptoms of the male climacteric and
increase libido. Fennel fruit contains mainly with essential oils, such as anethole. It also contains lignan
and fl avonoids that are predicted having an estrogen-like eff ect or as phytoestrogen. Phytoestrogen
is weak agonists for estrogen and can elicit statistic signifi cantly increases in uterine wet weight, at
defi nite dose, in the uterothrophic bioassay. It is known that estrogen has eff ect on woman’s sexual
organ, such as proliferation of uterine, mammary and ovary. The aim of this research was to investigate
the estrogenic eff ect of fennel fruit’s ethanolic extract in immature, 19 days old, Wistar female rats.
These models represent the climacteric/menopause phase, where estrogen level is very low because
in this age, estrogen not yet produced by ovary. The testing animals were divided into fi ve groups,
namely normal group, estradiol control group and three level doses of fennel extract (30 mg/200 g BW;
60 mg/200 g BW and 120 mg/200 g BW). The result indicated that start on 60 mg/200 g BW, fennel
extract signifi cantly (α=0.05) increased wet weight of uterine. Fennel extract also lengthen the uterine
and increased proliferation of uterine, such as uterine diameters, endometrium diameters and uterine
thickness on dose 60mg/200gBW and 120mg/200gBW. Analysis of vaginal smear showed vaginal
lubrication eff ect, surprisingly start on 60mg/200BW could induce estrous cycle.