Control of hyperglycemia significantly improves oxidative stress profile of pancreatic islets

Pancreatic islets are known to express low levels of antioxidant enzymes compared to other tissues and are therefore vulnerable to oxidative stress. Enhancing antioxidant defense mechanisms in pancreatic islets help them to cope better with oxidative stress. Persistent hyperglycemia under diabetic condition leads to continuous generation of reactive oxygen species, and different tissues exposed to this are oxidatively damaged depending on their antioxidant defense. Since islet cells are very poor in their antioxidant defense, our interest was to assess their antioxidant profile under normal, diabetic, insulin treated diabetic and untreated diabetic condition. On one hand, antioxidant defense was measured in terms of antioxidant enzymes and antioxidant molecules while on the other, damage caused to biomolecules was estimated. Our data demonstrate that oxidative damage to all biomolecules increased in islets cultured from diabetic animals, which enhanced further in islets from untreated diabetic animals. Insulin treatment significantly improved oxidative stress profile of islets indicating that the control of hyperglycemia leads to improvement in oxidative stress profile.