Antioxidant capacities in various animal sera as measured with multiple free-radical scavenging method

Abstract

Scavenging abilities of animal sera against six reactive species (OH, O₂^-, RO, t-BuOO, H₃C, and ¹O₂) were determined with the use of multiple free-radical scavenging (MULTIS) method. Commercially available sera from pig, horse, rabbit, Guinea pig, hamster and chicken were subjected to MULTIS analysis and the results were compared with human specimen. In general, animal sera showed lower scavenging ability against OH and RO radicals than human serum. However, it is noteworthy that rabbit and chicken sera have higher scavenging ability against O₂^- than others. This is consistent with the known data that superoxide dismutase levels in these sera are high. In addition, we determined the uric acid level in animal sera using the uricase-TOOS method. In chicken serum, uric acid was found to be the major effective component in RO scavenging. This paper is first to quantitatively evaluate antioxidant capacities in animal sera.

Keywords: Animal serum; Antioxidant ability; ESR spin-trapping; Multiple radical scavenging; Uric acid.