The pharmacological basis for the use of dried sheep placenta in traditional obstetric practice in Nigeria

Dried sheep placenta is sometimes used in traditional medicine to facilitate labour. The effects of an extract of powdered dried sheep placenta with normal saline on guinea-pig uterus, ileum, spontaneously beating atrium and Langendorff heart, rat uterus and hindquarters, and cat blood pressure were therefore examined. It was found that 1 g of dried sheep placenta had, on the guinea-pig uterus, an oxytocic activity equipotent with 0.075-0.32 i.u. of oxytocin. The oxytocic activity was unaffected at pHs between 4 and 10 or by boiling for 30 min or autoclaving for 15 min. Neither atropine nor promethazine inhibited the oxytocic action, but promethazine inhibited, to the same degree, contractions induced in the ileum by equipotent doses of the infusion and histamine. Atropine, however, had no effect on infusion-induced contractions in the ileum. The vasoconstriction induced in the rat hindquarters was antagonized by promethazine and phentolamine. Cat blood pressure was reduced, but it had positive inotropic and chronotropic effects on the spontaneously beating guinea-pig atrium and on the guinea-pig Langendorff heart. It was concluded that the dried placenta contains a chorionic oxytocic substance the action of which is independent of stimulation of H₁ receptors or of muscarinic receptors.