Estimation of oxidant, antioxidant and metabolic biomarkers in sera of diabetic rats administrated with parsley leaves extract and its isolated apigenin

Abstract

Summary: Growing interest has been shown in hypoglycaemic medications made from natural substances, notably those produced from plants. Flavonoids are phenolic compounds that exist in nature and have a broad range of biological activities and beneficial effects in the therapy of metabolic disorders.The research aimed to purify apigenin (AP) from parsley leaves and study its effect on the levels of some important serum biomarkers (metabolic, oxidant and antioxidant) in rats induced diabetes in comparison with crude parsley leaves extract (PLE).The study's findings demonstrated that apigenin is successfully purified from parsley leaves with a high yield and purity. Based on the outcomes of the experiment, the levels of all blood biomarkers showed improvement in diabetic treated group with either PLE or AP. Notably, PLE was more effective than AP in the enhancement of metabolic parameters. Considering the oxidant biomarkers (xanthine oxidase, peroxynitrite anion radical and malondialdehyde), AP had a stronger ability to reduce these harmful oxidants than PLE. Furthermore, the data of antioxidant activity showed that both compounds were able to improve the antioxidant enzyme activity. Noteworthy, AP increases the activity of glutathion-S-transferase (GST) and aminoacylase-1 (ACY1) more than PLE. Besides, PLE displays more effective in the activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and paraxonase (PON1). In the manner of non-antioxidant activity AP enhanced the level of metallothionein (MT), overall antioxidant activity (AOA), copper (Cu) more than PLE while, PLE showed stronger ability to improve zinc (Zn) levels.

Keywords

• Diabetes mellitus
• Flavonoids
• Apigenin
• Oxidative stress and antioxidants