Abstract

Maria B. Ventura, Javier L. Barberon, Diego K. Yamul, Patricio J. Leaden, Pedro A. Zeinsteger, Alejandro Palacios

Honey is a substance produced by bees and other social insects, from nectar or molasses that they gather on living plants and that transform or elaborate by evaporating water and action of enzymes, segregated by them, being stored in the alveoli or honeycomb cells. A prior investigation according to the literature indicated that the total antioxidant activity of honey is primarily provided by its phenolic composition. Polyphenols mainly exert their antioxidant activity by neutralizing free radicals. The objective of this study was to investigate the antioxidant effect of honey on the peroxidation of hepatic micro-somal membranes. Rat liver microsomes were incubated with different concentrations of honey (25, 50, 100, and 200 mg/ml) in an in vitro non enzymatic ascorbic acid—Fe+2system to determine the oxidative effect on membranes and to quantify the peroxida-tion level in standardized conditions. The microsomal peroxidation was quantified in a liquid scintillation counter Packard 1900 TR by chemiluminescence in counts per minute (cpm), using microsomal membranes without honey as control. Analyzing the effect of honey was observed that the total cpm/mg protein originated from light emission, che-miluminescence, was statistically lower in samples obtained from honey group than in the control group; the antioxidant effect found was concentration dependent, and the results show the mean and its standard error of the averages of the cpm of the control sample 790,25 ± 223; of control + ascorbate 2232 ± 630 and of different concentrations used of honey: 25 mg/ml 1684 ± 475; 50 mg/ml 1383 ± 390; 100 mg/ml 895,5 ± 253 and 200 mg/ml 854,75± 241. These results indicated that honey may act as antioxidant, protecting rat liver microsomes from peroxidative damage