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Abstract

Seabuckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides) fruits and foliage were used to explore the possibility to improve human health, on the basis of free radical biological principles. SOD, a free radical scavenger, exist in all the aerobic organisms and is very well known to scavenge extremely toxic O₂^- in to less toxic H₂O₂ and O₂. In this paper, existence, activity, physico-chemical properties and anti-oxidant effects of seabuckthorn SOD were studied and a drug preparation of seabuckthorn SOD and an oxidant complex was developed. SOD activity in the seabuckthorn fruit was found to be much higher as compared to its foliage and other plants. Seabuckthorn SOD belong to a class of Cu, Zn-type of SOD, due to its complete inhibition by KCN. It was found to be similar to bovine erythrocyte SOD in terms of UV absorption maxima and had a molecular weight of 36 000 Daltons. The optimum pH for seabuckthorn SOD was between pH7 and 8 and it was thermo-stable. Tryptophan amino acid was absent from seabuckthorn SOD. Under clinical trials, the SOD-drug preparation showed 7-8 times more antioxidant activity, as compared to human serum, and it reduced the contents of toxic MDA in the kidney by 58%, while increasing the vitamin E and glutathion contents in liver by 58 and 38%, respectively and activity of glutathione peroxidase by 10%. The SOD-anti-oxidant complex drug preparation helped in tolerating the anaerobic environments, pain relieving, had anti-inflammatory effects and was shown to increase the survival rate in the test animals against nuclear radiations.