MIHAELA ILIE*, DENISA MARGINĂ**, LUCIANA NISIPARU***, CONSTANŢA GANEA***, EVA KATONA***
* Department of Toxicology, Faculty of Pharmacy, ** Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, *** Department of Biophysics, Faculty of Medicine,“Carol Davila” University of Medicine and Pharmaceutics, 8, Eroii Sanitari Blvd, 050474 Bucharest, Romania
Abstract. The aim of our study was to evaluate the in vitro effect of vegetal antioxidants (quercetin and epigallocatechin gallate) on the membrane fluidity of human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC). 17 healthy subjects, 40 to 55 years old, were selected for this purpose. The protocol was approved by the local ethics committee and the informed consent of the patients was obtained. From à jeun blood samples drawn from the patients we isolated the PBMC’s and incubated them, at room temperature, for 20 minutes with the above mentioned antioxidants. We evaluated the fluorescence anisotropy (r) and lipid order parameter (S) using the fluorescent TMA-DPH probe in a steady state fluorescence polarization experiment. The in vitro effect of flavonoids seems to result in an increase of the membrane fluidity (more than 50% of the subjects presented the effect).
Key words: flavonoids, epigallocatechin gallate, quercetin, fluorescence anisotropy, lipid order parameter, membrane fluidity.