Acta Pharm. 56 (2006) 87-93

Effect of acarbose on alanine aminotransferase and aspartate aminotransferase activities in the liver of control and diabetic CBA mice

ROBERTA PETLEVSKI^1*, MIRKO HADZIJA², JANA LUKAC BAJALO³ and DUBRAVKA JURETIC¹

rpetlevski@pharma.hr

¹Department of Medical Biochemistry and Haematology, Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
²Laboratory for Molecular Endocrinology and Transplantation, Ruðer Boskovic Institute, Zagreb, Croatia
³Chair of Clinical Biochemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

The purpose of this study was to examine the short-term effects of diet containing 0.1% (m/m) of acarbose in standard laboratory chow on specific liver enzyme activities: alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) in control and diabetic CBA mice. Diabetes was induced by intravenous injection of alloxan monohydrate in a dose of 75 mg kg^-1 mouse body mass seven days before the treatment with acarbose. There were four groups of CBA mice in the experiment: control (C) mice (n = 6) and diabetic (D) mice (n = 8) fed standard chow; control (C/A-100) mice (n = 8) and diabetic (D/A-100) mice (n = 8) fed standard chow containing 0.1% acarbose. Diabetes induced the decrease of the ALT catalytic activities to 69.6% of control value. A similar level of decreased ALT catalytic activity was detected in the liver of control and diabetic mice fed with chow containing 0.1% acarbose. No changes in the specific and total activities of AST in the liver of the experimental groups were observed.

Keywords: acarbose, alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, diabetes