Hepatoprotective Effect of 17β-Estradiol as Antioxidant Modulators Against Stress Damage

Background: liver is one of the most important organs affected by exercise. according to the literature a few study to date has investigated the effects of estrogen supplementation on exercise-induced oxidative stress in liver tissue of rats. objectives: we aimed to investigate the effects of estrogen supplementation on oxidative stress markers in liver tissue of exercised rats. materials and methods: male rats (n = 35) were divided as estrogen supplemented (n = 18) and non-supplemented groups (n = 17); these groups were further divided as rest and eccentric exercised groups. eccentric exercise groups were further divided as rats killed after 1 hour and 48 hours of eccentric exercise. estrogen (10 mg/kg) was administered subcutaneously for 30 days. eccentric exercise was applied as treadmill run (15° downhill, 20 m/min) consisting of periods of 5 min run and 2 min rest repeated 18 times. the rat liver was examined biochemically and histologically. activities of gst, gsh-px, cat, sod and mda concentration were also measured spectrophotometrically. results: some disruptions were detected in experimental groups compared with the control group. additionally, exercise training caused an increase in sod and decrease in gsh-px activities in some experimental groups. sod activities increased significantly in group 3 (estrogen (-), eccentric exercise (+) killed (after 1 h), compared with group 5 (estrogen (-), eccentric exercise (+) killed (after 48 h). on the other hand, gsh-px activities were also significantly decreased in groups 3, 4 and 5 compared with the control group. leukocyte infiltration in liver increased after 48 hours compared with after 1 hour and estrogen supplementation was not able to prevent this infiltration. conclusions: estrogen seemed to be not very effective to prevent eccentric exercise-induced liver damage.