Abstract
The present study was aimed to investigate the effect of estrogen and testosterone as antioxidants and their ability to prevent the effect of H2O2-induced oxidative stress and their reflections on blood parameters and antioxidant status of male rabbits. 72 adult male rabbits were divided randomly into 12 groups (6/group), 1st group: Intact, 2nd group: Intact-H2O2, 3rd group: Castrated, 4th group: Castrated-H2O2, 5th group: Intact-H2O2-Testosterone, 6th group: Castrated-H2O2-Testoterone, 7th group: Intact-H2O2-Estrogen, 8th group: Castrated-H2O2-Estrogen, 9th group: Intact-Testosterone, 10th group: Castrated-Testosterone, 11th group: Intact-Estrogen, 12th group: Castrated-Estrogen, treatments continued for 4 weeks. Results showed that castration increased significantly GSH, TAC, TG, HDL-C levels, and significantly decreased MDA, AST, ALT levels. Treatment with H2O2 caused a significant decrease in the levels of GSH, TAC, HDL-C, total proteins, and a significant increase in the levels of MDA, cholesterol, TG, LDL-C, ALT, AST compared to untreated group. On the other hand, estrogen treatment improves TAC, GSH and lipid profile and reduce MDA significantly as compared with testosterone treatment and control group. In regard to interaction effects, castration without H2O2- estrogen treatment reduces the stress as represented by the reduction of MDA, risk index, ALT and elevate the GSH and TAC levels. These results indicate that castration and estrogen treatment of castrated and intact male rabbits reduce stress effects and improve the lipid profile and some immunological measures.
