Garlic is a natural ingredient often used as an alternative to high blood pressure or hypertension treatment. This plant contains more than 200 chemical components, one of which is allicin, which lowers blood pressure.
Even so, the use of garlic as an antihypertensive is not recommended for pregnant women. The reason is, the allicin compound has the same blood pressure-lowering mechanism as the ACE Inhibitor class of hypertension drugs.
“This ACE Inhibitor class drug is very dangerous if consumed by pregnant women because it has a teratogenic effect on the fetus. This has the potential to induce fetal growth failure, abnormalities, and abnormal development of cells during pregnancy which cause damage to the embryos,” said Natania Ayu Sandy, a student from the Faculty of Pharmacy on Wednesday (17/7) at UGM.
This fact was found from the results of research that she conducted together with Theresia Shinta W (Faculty of Pharmacy) and Dion Adiriesta Dewananda (Faculty of Veterinary Medicine). They conducted research on experimental animals, namely rats that were mated and given garlic extract for 14 days. The results showed changes that led to a teratogenic effect.
Natania explained that the results were obtained after macropathological observations, X-rays and scanning electron microscope were carried out to confirm the occurrence of teratogenic effects. “The result is known that the use of garlic extract as anti-hypertensive when consumed by pregnant women causes a risk to the fetus. However, in the future, further research is still needed to support this research,” she said.
This research was carried out as part of the 2019 UGM Student Creativity Program in Exact Science Research (PKM-PE) funded by the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education.
