Plasma antioxidant status and motor features in de novo Chinese Parkinson's disease patients

Abstract

Purpose: This study aimed to explore plasma antioxidant status in de novo Chinese Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and investigate its relationship with specific motor features of PD. Patients and methods: Sixty-four de novo Chinese PD patients and 40 age- and sex-matched healthy controls were recruited. Each motor feature of PD patients was assessed by unified Parkinson's disease rating scale. Plasma antioxidant status, including plasma level of glutathione (GSH) and plasma activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px), was detected using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The relationship between the plasma antioxidant status and motor features of PD was evaluated by Spearman's coefficient. Results: Plasma GSH level and plasma activities of GSH-Px, CAT and SOD of PD patients were lower than those of healthy controls. Moreover, the declining activity of plasma CAT was related with the increasing mean postural instability and gait disorder (PIGD) score and growing age. In contrast, the severity of tremor was positively correlated with plasma SOD activity. Conclusion: Our study demonstrates that the plasma antioxidant status is impaired in de novo Chinese PD patients. The complex relationship between the plasma antioxidant status and different motor features indicates that the antioxidant mechanisms underlying tremor and PIGD of PD may be different.

KEYWORDS:

• Parkinson's disease
• plasma
• oxidative stress
• tremor
• PIGD

Acknowledgements

The first four authors (Yongsheng Yuan, Qing Tong, Li Zhang and Siming Jiang) contributed equally to this work.

Declaration of Interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper. This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (number BK20141494), the Jiangsu Provincial Personnel Department ‘the Great of Six Talented Man Peak’ Project (number 2014-WSN-013), the University Natural Science Research Project in Jiangsu Province (number13KJB32009), the Opening Project of Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Neurodegeneration (number SJ11KF01), the Jiangsu Province's Special Fund for Scientific & Technical Innovation and Achievement Transformation (Life & Health Science and Technology) (number BL2012025) and the Project Funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD).