S. Porta, S. Wurzinger, R. Wintersteiger, Institute of Applied Stress Research, Bad Radkersburg, AUSTRIA, Institute of Pathophysiology, Medical University, Graz, AUSTRIA ,Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Graz, AUSTRIA
- Determination of interactions between “somatic” and “oxydative” stress increase test sensitivity
Application of different concentrations of an elderberry concentrate (60 000 mg/l) lead to a dose dependent influence upon peroxydase activities in human plasma. Highest peroxydase activities were seen at suboptimal (650mg/person) concentrations. This points towards a pharmacologically specific effect of the concentrate.
However, treatment with 650mg mg of elderberry concentrate did not yield significant different effects upon oxydizability of lipids in plasma. This was obviously due to the large standard deviations in both the verum and the control group.
It was to be expected, that each group probably consists of persons in varying states of unknown mental or physical stress, influencing free radical production.
We proceeded to assess those hitherto unknown stress effects by the so called CSA (Clinical Stress Assessment) method. It determines catecholamine effects by measuring a pattern of serological parameters including blood gas changes, changes in blood buffer as well as changes in blood glucose, lactate and electrolyte shifts. All those parameters change correlative to varying catecholamine secretion (Life Sciences, Porta et al. 1993).
It turned out, that especially blood buffer markers like BE or HCO3 and pCO2 correlated significantly with oxidation lagtimes of lipids, in each group.
Those correlations gave us standard curves which where significantly different in verum and placebo groups.
It seems, that determination of the oxidative state of groups of probants are more successful and sensitive if the level of “somatic” stress of each person can be established.
Such determination of a whole pattern of at least 12 – 15 differently sensible stress effects can be carried out by using only about 120 microliters of capillary blood from fingertip or earlobe, is carried out by transportable, routine ICU equipment (NOVA CCX) and automatically calculated and printed on the spot with CSA software.
2 Macro- versus micromethods for the determination of oxidative state
Since the necessary determination of the oxidative state using lipidox, protox, oLab, peroxydase or peroxide measurements required antecubital venous blood, we tried to develop methods for oxidative stress determination from capillary blood too. The obvious reasons were
- less molesting of human probants, increased security and therefore increased compliance of the test persons. The latter assumption proved to be true by vastly increasing numbers of volunteers.
- considerably speeding up of sampling procedures.
Comparison between macro- and micromethods turned out to be rather in favour of the latter. The number of correlations of somatic and oxidative parameter out of venous blood versus capillary blood was 3/5.
Although absolute values of e.g. HCO3 in capillary and venous blood are different, the correlations are very similar. That “overlapping” feature may help comparison of data.
3. Influence of elderberry biopolyphenols upon “somatic” stress parameters
Acute application of 650mg elderberry concentrate before a one hours’ training run resulted in significantly lower lactate increase of the verum group.
After acute application of 650 mg elderberry concentrate, typical post workload features like significant decrease in HCO3, Baseexcess or pCO2 were not seen.
Divergent data have been obtained about blood glucose behaviour:
While in healthy runners blood glucose did not significantly decrease after exercise, in NIDDMs chronic application of elderberry concentrate for several weeks as an adjuvans of oral antidiabetic drugs decreased blood glucose values significantly more than in a group without elderberry treatment.
4. Influence of Mg status upon oxidative state
Experiments with the Austrian anti terror group “COBRA” showed, that a sufficient supply with magnesium influences the oxidative state of a person:.
If one subdivides a group of persons according to the average of ionized serum magnesium, only the low magnesium group shows significant linear correlations between ionized serum magnesium on the one hand and peroxydase or oLab values on the other.
Such linear correlations are known to appear mostly when limiting steps are involved. Since peroxydase activities and oLab is affected in an opposite way, we take it as an indication that the limiting step can be located with the low magnesium concentrations.
Key words: oxidative stress, elderberry, blood buffer systems, magnesium