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eCAM Advance Access published online on February 20, 2009
eCAM, doi:10.1093/ecam/nep011
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© 2009 The Author(s).
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Garlic Increases Antioxidant Levels in Diabetic and Hypertensive Rats Determined by a Modified Peroxidase Method

Hana Drobiova, Martha Thomson, Khaled Al-Qattan, Riitta Peltonen-Shalaby, Zainab Al-Amin and Muslim Ali

Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, Kuwait University, P.O. Box 5969, 13060-Safat, Kuwait

Oxidative damage by free radicals has been implicated in the pathogenesis of vascular disease in diabetes and hypertension. In the present study, the total antioxidant status in diabetic and hypertensive rats before and after treatment with garlic (Allium sativum) was determined. The total serum antioxidants were measured by a modified method reported earlier by Miller and coworkers. The reproducibility of the assay was confirmed by determining standard curves for the known antioxidants: trolox (a stable analog of vitamin E), glutathione and vitamin C with interassay correlation coefficients (R2, n = 10 in triplicate) of 0.9984, 0.9768 and 0.987, respectively, confirming the reliability and reproducibility of the assay. This assay was then used to determine total serum antioxidant levels of streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats and two-kidney one-clip hypertensive rats both before and after 3 weeks of treatment with an aqueous extract of garlic (500 mg/kg IP daily). The serum antioxidant levels of rats after 3 weeks of treatment were significantly higher (P < 0.001) than the pretreatment levels in both diabetic and hypertensive rats. The increased serum antioxidant levels were paralleled by a decrease in serum glucose in the garlic-treated diabetic rats and lowered systolic blood pressure in the garlic-treated hypertensive rats. We conclude from our study that (i) total antioxidants can be measured by a simple, reproducible, reliable assay and (ii) the total antioxidant status can be significantly improved by treatment with garlic.

Keywords: antioxidant assay – diabetes – garlic – hypertension – oxidative stress

For reprints and all correspondence: Martha Thomson, Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, Kuwait University, P.O. Box 5969, 13060-Safat, Kuwait. Tel: +965-2498-5710; Fax: +965-484-7054; E-mail: mmtkuwait2003{at}hotmail.com

Received August 12, 2008; accepted January 16, 2009


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