Study of the effect of zinc oxide on enzymatic antioxidant activity in male rats

Zinc is part of the antioxidant system, so zinc deficiency impairs the body's antioxidant defense system and leads to increased oxidative stress. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of zinc oxide on the antioxidant status in rat.
Twenty-five male Wistar rats of 5-8 weeks’ old were divided into five groups of five animals each. Next, during the following 10 days, four groups (1-4) of the rats were exposed to different doses: 50, 00, 150 and 200 mg/kg of zinc oxide (ZnO) as the intraperitoneal injection; and, group 5 was considered as the control group. After this stage, 2 ml blood was collected from the jugular vein of the rats and oxidant and antioxidant parameters containing glutathione peroxidase (GPX), superoxide dismutase (SOD), total antioxidant capacity (TAC) and lipid peroxidation (LPO) were assayed.
Activity of SOD increased significantly in the groups treated with different doses of ZnO (P The results of this study showed that the used concentrations of ZnO increased significantly SOD and TOS and reduced insignificantly GPX compared to the control group which can be a marker of oxidative stress induction.