Abstract

Background: The modern way of life exposes us to substantial oxidative stress, put-ting the focus on the research of antioxidant effects of dietary supplements. Recent studies have shown that the effectiveness of particular vitamins and herbal preparations might have an effect on paraoxonase activity. Paraoxonase 1 is an HDL associated enzyme which prevents the oxidation of LDL. Several studies have shown the beneficial effect of some dietary components to the activity of paraoxonase. The aim of this study was to analyze the effects of cranberry extract and vitamin C and zinc preparations (vitamin C + Zn) on serum paraoxonase 1 activity, antioxidant status, and glucose and lipid concentration.
Methods: The study included 31 healthy volunteers (median age 24 years). They were divided into 3 groups according to the intervention type and smoking status and ex-posed to commercially available preparations of the cranberry extract (2 g/day) and vitamin C + Zn (300 mg/day) during 4 weeks.
Results: The results have shown that there is a significant increase in the activi-ty of the paraoxonase 1 in non-smokers after the intervention with the cranberry ex-tract as well as with vitamin C + Zn preparations. Also, total antioxidant status increased in the non-smokers subgroup after intervention with vitamin C + Zn. However, the lipid profile did not change significantly in response to antioxidant preparations.
Conclusions: Our results show that antioxidant supplements can increase the antioxi-dant potential of an organism as well as paraoxonase 1 activity. This observation is pointing to the potential complementary role of dietary sup-plements in the pri-mary prevention of atherosclerosis.

DOI: 10.7754/Clin.Lab.2012.121005