Antioxidative status of patients with alcoholic liver disease in southeastern Taiwan

AIM：To investigate the antioxidative status of patients with alcoholic liver disease（ALD） in southeastern Taiwan.METHODS：Our study comprised 27 patients with ALD recruited from Taitung Mackay Memorial Hospital,located in southeastern Taiwan.Patients with ALD included 12 non-aborigines（12 men） and 15 aborigines（11 men and 4 women）.According to the severity of ALD,patients with ALD included 10 with hepatitis（9 men and 1 woman） and 17 with cirrhosis（14 men and 3 women）.Twenty-two age-and gender-matched healthy adultsserved as the control group in this study.Venous blood（10 mL） of each subject was drawn into EDTA-containing tubes after 8 h overnight fasting.RESULTS：Compared to the control group,patients with ALD showed significantly lower erythrocytic catalase（11.1 ± 0.7 U/mg Hb vs 8.0 ± 0.7 U/mg Hb,P 〈 0.05） and superoxide dismutase（9.5 ± 1.6 U/mg Hb vs 3.0 ± 0.2 U/mg Hb,P 〈 0.05） activities.Furthermore,the erythrocytic reduced glutathione/oxidized glutathione ratio was signif icantly lower in ALD patients than that in the control group（38.1 ± 5.4 vs 15.7 ± 1.9,P 〈 0.05）.The results revealed that patients with ALD experienced more oxidative stress than those in the control group.The non-aboriginal,but not the aboriginal,ALD group had higher erythrocytic glutathione peroxidase（GPX） activity than that in the control group（46.1 ± 7.8 U/g Hb vs 27.9 ± 2.2 U/g Hb,P 〈 0.05）.Hepatitis,but not cirrhosis,ALD patients had higher erythrocytic GPX activity than that in the control group（44.3 ± 8.6 U/g Hb vs 27.9 ± 2.2 U/g Hb,P 〈 0.05）.CONCLUSION：Our results indicate that both ethnicity and the severity of ALD may cause different erythrocytic antioxidative enzyme activities especially GPX activity.