M.M.A. ATTIA*, A.M. SAYED*, F.A. IBRAHIM*, A.S. MOHAMMED**, M.S. EL-ALFY***

*Biochemistry Department, National Research Centre, Cairo, Egypt
**Department of Chemistry-Biochemistry, Faculty of Science, Cairo University, Egypt
***Pediatric Department, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, Egypt

Abstract. The present work is concerned with the study of the effects of antioxidant vitamins on antioxidant status and liver function in homozygous β-thalassemic patients. The patients were treated with vitamins E, C and A for twelve months. With respect to antioxidant vitamins, before treatment there were deficiency in these vitamins in thalassemic patients as compared with healthy controls. Also, before treatment there were a significant elevation in the malondialdehyde (MDA) concentration, and significant deficiency in levels of reduced glutathione (GSH). After treatment, patients with β-thalassemia major exhibited significant improvements in the levels of non-enzymatic parameters as compared with the levels of these parameters before treatment. Also, MDA significantly decreased, reduced glutathione was highly increased after treatment. Also, values of Hb and ferritin showed improvements of their values after treatment. The results of enzymes showed that, thalassemic major children suffer from high levels of ALT, AST, glutathione peroxidase, and superoxide dismutase enzymes activities before vitamins treatment. The activities of ALT, AST, GPx, and SOD decreased significantly, also the activities of catalase and glutathione reductase significantly increased in β-thalassemic patients after treatment compared with their activities before treatment. Finally, it seems clear that treatment of β-thalassemic patients with antioxidant vitamins serves to improve the healthy status of the patients through an enhancement of the levels of antioxidants and reduction of the oxidative damage, and hence improve the hemoglobin levels and liver function.
Key words: β-thalassemia, vitamin E, vitamin C, vitamin A, GSH, MDA, ferritin, catalase, SOD, glutathione peroxidase, glutathione reductase, ALT, AST, hemoglobin.

Corresponding author’s e-mail: yousatef@yahoo.com

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