Leaves aqueous extract as cytological dye for buccal cell screening / Nurizan Zaimy

Background: The efficacies of some natural dye were examined on buccal cell to obtain non-toxic, eco-friendly and cheap stain for cytology.
Methods: Aqueous extract from leaves of Alternanthera dentata (purple knight), Alternanthera ficoidea (grenadine), Brassica oleracea (red cabbage), Amaranthus dubius (red spinach) and Lawsonia inermis (henna) with and without Aluminium chloride (AlCl3) used to stain buccal cell. Regressive Papanicolaou stain are used as a standard staining procedure with little modification. All dye extraction were test for pH value and spectrophotometer to examine the concentration of the sample. Staining capability of the slide were observe and recorded then statistical analysis were done by using Weighted Kappa.
Results: Statistical analysis of weighted kappa revealed a fair correlation between staining intensity of leaves aqueous extract dye with Papanicolaou stain while One-way ANNOVA shows p<0.001, which means there is difference between leaves aqueous extract with Papanicolaou stain, therefore the dyes are not comparable to the gold standard. All the dye extract were acidic with the pH range of 4.09 to 6.28 and with addition of mordant the range drop between 1.69 to 1.95.
Conclusions: All leaves aqueous extract used in this study has the ability to stain the cell whether for nucleus or cytoplasm, however, the color intensity are not comparable with Papanicolaou stain as the gold standard.