ABSTRACT

Pregnancy is associated with physiologically reversible but impor-tant changes in various body systems like blood pressure regulation or oxi-dant status in various organs. The effects of transient hypotension on the fetus and mother are not studied extensively although experienced frequently. Du-ring hypotension, blood flow of many tissues is altered. The liver is vulnerable to hypoxia and the affected oxidant balance may lead to changes in other tissu-es, including the blood. On the basis of these accumulated data, in the present study we tested the effects of transient hypotension on oxidant stress in the li-ver in pregnant rats.

Twenty-eight 3-month-old female Wistar-albino rats were divided into virgin control (VC), virgin hypotension (VH), pregnant cont-rol (PC), and pregnant hypotension (PH) groups. On day 15 of pregnancy in the PH and PC groups and a week after admission to the laboratory in the VH and VC groups the right femoral artery was catheterized and hypotension was created for 30 minutes by blood withdrawal. Forty-eight hours after the sur-gery all the animals were sacrificed and liver tissues were stored at -80 °C un-til biochemical analysis for malonyldialdehyde (MDA) and reduced glutathio-ne (GSH) was performed.

MDA levels were higher in the pregnant and hypotensive groups com-pared to the control animals. Amongst all the groups, the PH group had the lo-west GSH and the highest MDA levels (p<0,05)

Pregnancy as well as increasing lipid peroxidation weakens the antioxidant defense system, which becomes more prominent especially in the liver tissue during the transient hypotensive periods in late pregnancy