Assessment of erythrocyte SOD activity in different stages of Essential Hypertension patients

Abstract

Oxidative stress has been found to be associated with most of the diseases. In the past several years, much interest has arisen over the involvement of free radical metabolism in the disturbance in endothelial or intimal cells of blood vessels, which play an important role in the pathogenesis of essential hypertension (HT). Although limited information is available on the activity of antioxidant enzyme erythrocyte superoxide dismutase (SOD) and its relation with blood pressure in patients with HT, alteration in their activity with severity of disease is still obscure. The objective of present study was to estimate the activity of SOD in hypertensive subjects and to determine the variation in erythrocyte SOD activity with increasing blood pressure. In the present study, erythrocyte SOD activity was measured in 90 hypertensive subjects (30-60 years) which were categorized into three groups as pre-hypertension, stage I HT and stage II HT (depending upon their blood pressure) and statistically compared it with that of 30 healthy individuals, served as control. Erythrocyte SOD activity was found to be significantly low in each patient group as compared to control (P<0.001). These activities were also low among three groups of essential hypertension. These findings suggest that depletion in erythrocyte SOD activity with subsequent rise in blood pressure is due to its superoxide anion scavenging action against hypertension induced production of free radical in the body. Thus, erythrocyte SOD activity may be an effective marker of oxidative stress in different stages of essential hypertension and its related complications.