Combined therapy of rutin and silymarin has more protective effects on streptozotocin-induced oxidative stress in rats

The present study has designed to evaluate the combined effect of rutin (RT) and silymarin (SM) on oxidative stress in STZ-induced diabetic rats. Diabetic rats exhibited increased serum glucose, aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), acid phosphatase (ACP), triglyceride (TG), total cholesterol (TC), creatinine (Cr), urea (BUN) and C-reactive proteins with significant decrease in serum insulin, total protein (TP) and albumin levels. Pro-inflammatory biomarkers including tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-6 (IL-6) and interleukin-1ß (IL-1ß) levels significantly increased in diabetic rats. The activities of antioxidant enzymes superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), glutathione peroxidase (GPx), glutathione-S-transferase (GST) and the levels of reduced glutathione (GSH) were decreased while increases in the levels of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) were observed in liver. Oral treatment with RT or/and SM to diabetic rats for a period of 6 weeks showed significant ameliorative effects on all the biochemical parameters studied. These results indicated that combined supplementation of RT and SM has more potential ameliorative effects on diabetic-induced oxidative stress compared to their individual effect; hence the combined therapy could be more effective than an adjuvant therapy for the prevention and/or management of diabetes and aggravated antioxidant status.