Total antioxidant activity in Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) is one of the major progressive neurological disorders, characterized by the loss of dopaminergic neurons in pars compacta of the substantia nigra. The causes for this is the interactions between external toxins (which arise from environmental, dietary and life style factors) and internal toxins arising from normal metabolism, genetic and epigenetic (mitochondria, membranes and proteins) components. Oxidative stress is one of the intermediary risk factors that could initiate and promote degeneration of neurons. Even though oxidative stress in brain is an important factor in the neuropathology of PD, yet the role of systemic oxidative stress is inconclusive. In the present study, we estimated the total antioxidant activity (AOA) and albumin levels in twenty PD patients who were on levodopa, and in age matched twenty-five normal controls. We observed a significant reduction in total antioxidant activity in PD patients with a mean value of 0.93 ± 0.17 mmol/1 as compared to 1.06 ± 0.16 mmol/1 in controls (P < 0.001). Albumin levels were also significantly reduced in PD patients, with a mean of 2.52 ± 0.29 g/dl as compared to 3.0 ± 0.54 g/dl in controls (P < 0.001). It could be concluded from our study that the diminution in total antioxidant activity could be due to the reduction of radical trapping capacity of naturally occurring antioxidant albumin, which in turn could be due to reduced dietary supplementation or defective absorption of amino acids. Supplementation of multiple antioxidants may slow down the progression of the disease.