Effects of experimental therapeutic and toxic lithium applications on nitric oxide concentration in brain

摘要

Introduction and Purpose: Lithium is the best known element for its therapeutic efficacy in the treatment of manic depressive illness It's clinical profile includes the antimanic and antidepressant actions as well as prophylaxis of both mania and depression by reducing the frequency of bipolar episodes. NO is a radical species and is currently recognized as an important bio-regulatory molecule in the nerve cells. Even though NO has a messenger role in many tissues as brain, blood cells and liver, they easily involve free radical. In pathological cases both NO and superoxide radical increase and produced superoxide can not be eliminated by SOD. Present study has been designed to search the effects of short term lithium application on NO, MDA level and SOD enzyme activity in brain at therapeutic and toksik doses in rats. Materials and Method: While both control and experimental animals receiving normal diet and drinking tap water, lithium carbonate is given to experimental group animals by gastric gavage: 3mgLi/kgbw/day as therapeutic dose and 50mgLi/kgbw/day as toxic dose for two weeks. After experimental period brain, serum lithium concentrations and brain NO concentration and MDA and SOD activities were determined. Results and Discussion: While there was no difference detected between brain lithium concentrations but there was statistically increased lithium found in serum of'experimental group animals (p < 0.01). NO levels in experimental animals were found to be higher than that of controls (p < 0.01).both in therapeutic and toxic dose. While MDA concentration found to be decreased in therapeutic group but increased in toxic dose group according to controls (p < 0.05). SOD activity was found relatively higher in therapeutic group but decreased in toxic dose group when compared to controls (p < 0.01).