The Relationship Between Nitric Oxide, Antioxidants, Lipid Peroxides And Coronary Heart Disease

Background Growing numbers of morbidity and mortality due to the coronary heart disease (CHD) is recognized as the more increasing challenge in the world. The initial stage of atherosclerosis, early diagnosis of CHD are the main objectives for current research in the world. It is considered that oxidative stress is involved in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis, and for the prevention and treatment of atherosclerosis, a variety of antioxidants has been used in clinical studies in the last years.It is found that nitric oxide, antioxidants, antioxidative enzymes may improve endothelial function in patients with risk factors for atherosclerosis such as diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and hypercholesterolemia. However, several studies have provided conflicting results on the relationship between oxidative stress and CHD. The aim of this research was to further clarify the relationship between CHD and nitric oxide, antioxidants, antioxidative enzymes, lipid peroxides, and explore its potential clinical significance.Methods Fifty-three patients with angiographically apparent coronary atherosclerosis (positive group as the group of patient with CHD) and fifty-three patients with normal-appearing coronary angiograms (negative group as the group of normal control) were enrolled in a controlled research, in which the levels of nitric oxide (NO), vitamin C (VC), vitamin E (VE), β -carotene β -CAR), lipid peroxides (LPO) in plasma, as well as the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), and glutathioneperoxidase (GPX), and the level of lipoperoxides (LPO) in erythrocytes weremeasured by spectrophotometry. All these indices were analyzed to the correlation ofcoronary heart disease via statistic analysis.Results The average level of plasma NO was obviously decreased (449.62 ± 59.58vs 474.45±64.15, P<0.05),VC,VE, β -CAR in plasma as well as the activities ofSOD,CAT,GPX in erythrocytes were significantly decreased (P<0.05) ,and thelevels of LPO in plasma and erythrocytes were markedly increased (P<0.05) in thegroup of patient with CHD compared with those in the control group. The findings fromlogistic regression analysis suggested that there existed a negative correlation betweenNO, VC and CHD (B = -0.076, -1.153, P<0.05 ).Conclusion The findings in the present research is that free radical reactions in thepatients with CHD were pathologically exacerbated,and the balance between theoxidation and antioxidation system was markedly disturbed.