Oxidant and Antioxidant Status in Parkinson’s Disease.

ABSTRACT

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive, neurological disease that mainly affects movements and occurs at older ages and is clinically characterized by resting tremor, rigidity, bradykinesia and postural imbalance. These clinical manifestations of PD are caused by a selective degeneration of dopamine-producing neurons in substantia nigra in the brain stem and the consequent dopamine shortage in the striatum. Oxidants and antioxidants related substances may contribute to the pathogenesis and the progression of Parkinson’s disease. Research can make great progress in understanding and further treating the PD. This study demonstrates significant variation of oxidants-antioxidants status in Parkinson’s disease. Oxidative stress plays a crucial role in progression of PD; however, oxidative stress is a cause or the consequence of PD is debatable. In our study we observed there is significant increase in the levels of serum Malondialdehyde (p< 0.001), Nitric oxide end products (p< 0.001), and significant decrease in the activity of Glutathione peroxidase (p< 0.001), Superoxide dismutase (p< 0.001), and Catalase (p< 0.001) in PD patients as compared with controls. Further Vitamin C (p< 0.05), Vitamin E (p< 0.05) significantly decreased, but Uric acid levels (p> 0.05) remain unchanged and this may be due to compensatory mechanism of body against oxidative stress, which not allowed much alteration in other parameter in the PD patients as compared with controls.