Diallyl polysulfides from Allium sativum as immunomodulators, hepatoprotectors, and antimycobacterial agents

Mycobacterium tuberculosis remains one of the world's deadliest killers, with an annual death rate of ∼1.5 million. The medicinal effects of garlic have been well documented, and natural products have been shown to have antimycobacterial activity. The current study evaluated the efficacy of six Allium sativum L. polysulfide mixtures as antimycobacterial agents together with their cytotoxic, immunomodulatory, and hepatoprotective activities. The microtitre PrestoBlue assay was used to determine the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC). Cytotoxicity was evaluated by using peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC). Excreted cytokine levels were determined by utilizing an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), by exposing isolated PBMCs to varying concentrations of polysulfide mixtures. Human C3A liver cells were utilized in the hepatoprotective study, to assess the protective effect against the toxicity induced by acetaminophen. Samples with higher amounts of diallyl trisulfide (Sample G4) showed the highest antimycobacterial activity, exhibiting an MIC of 2.5 μg/mL against M. tuberculosis H37Rv. Five samples showed moderate toxicity in PBMC, with G1 showing no toxicity. The selective index of G4 was the highest, with a selectivity index close to one. Two samples, G3 and G6 containing higher amounts of diallyl tetrasulfide and lower amounts of diallyl trisulfide, showed >50% hepatoprotection. This is comparable to a hepatoprotective agent, Silymarin, which showed a hepatoprotective effect of 30% at the tested concentration. Diallyl tetrasulfide showed significant antimycobacterial activity. A combination of higher diallyl tetrasulfide and lower diallyl trisulfide was indicative of hepatoprotective activity.