Active Oxygen Generation by the Reaction of Selenite with Reduced Glutathione in Vitro

Abstract

Increased lipid peroxidation caused by selenite treatment was observed in vivo (Dougherty and Hoekstra 1982) and in vitro (Bunyan et al. 1960; Stacey and Klaassen 1981; Seko 1986). In vitro treatment of cells with selenite resulted in the decreased content of reduced glutathione and NADPH (Tsen and Collier 1960; Anundi et al. 1984), which are important in protecting cells against oxidation. However, the decrease in GSH concentration did not always relate to cell damage (Tsen and Collier 1960; Seko 1986) or lipid peroxidation (Seko 1986) in erythrocyte suspension. On the other hand, the importance of GSH (Young et al. 1981) or reactive sulfhydryls of hemoglobin (Seko 1986) have been considered to play an important role in selenite induced in vitro hemolysis. In order to estimate the relationship between GSH and the selenite-induced lipid peroxidation, we have examined the active oxygen generation in the mixture of selenite and GSH by using luminol- or lucigenin-dependent chemiluminescence (CL) as an indicator.

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