Wild garlic extract reduces lipid peroxidation in terbuthylazine-treated human erythrocytes

Abstract

Background: Among other negative effects, herbicides induce oxidative stress, leading to lipid peroxidation and protein oxidation. Therefore, there is a growing need to identify natural compounds with sufficient antioxidant capacity and mitigate the negative effects of herbicides without side effects.

Objective: Our study aimed to examine the protective effect of the phenolic extract of wild garlic (WG) leaves on terbuthylazine-treated erythrocytes.

Material and methods: In human erythrocytes treated with the herbicide terbuthylazine (4.5 mg/L) alone and a combination of terbuthylazine and WG extract, we measured malondialdehyde (MDA) and haemoglobin (Hb) concentrations and the antioxidant activities of CuZn superoxide dismutase (SOD1; EC 1.15.1.1) and catalase (CAT; EC 1.11.1.6) in vitro.

Results: In comparison with terbuthylazine, WG extract reduced the concentrations of MDA and Hb from 59.69 to 43.45 nmol/gHb (27%, p < 0.001) and 165.08 to 128.64 g/L (22%, p < 0.05), respectively. Catalase activity was induced for samples treated with both WG extract and terbuthylazine compared with terbuthylazine alone (p < 0.05).

Conclusions: The results demonstrated that WG may reduce the toxicity of terbuthylazine, and the erythrocyte membrane may be the primary site of phenolic action. Therefore, the lipid peroxidation intensity could be a biomarker of oxidative damage caused by terbuthylazine and the protective effect of WG.

Keywords:

• Terbuthylazine
• human erythrocytes
• malondialdehyde
• haemoglobin
• Allium ursinum L

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Author contributions

BPD and BK: conceptualization. BPD, BK, and SŠ: methodology. SŠ and MŽ: formal analysis. BPD, BK, SŠ, and MŽ: investigation. CJG: data curation. BPD: writing – original draft preparation. BK: writing – review and editing. BPD: visualization and funding acquisition. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author [BK and BDP] upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Ministry for Scientific and Technological Development, Higher Education and Information Society of the Republic of Srpska under Grant 19/6-020/961-107/18.