Lipid peroxidation inhibitory factors in liver and muscle of rat, mouse, and chicken.

Glutathione- or sulfhydryl-dependent antioxidant factors that act to prevent lipid peroxidation have been reported in both microsomes and cytoplasm from rat liver. The cytoplasmic factor has been identified in several other tissues and species, but the distribution of the microsomal factor has not been reported. Chicken and mouse livers had much lower activities of the glutathione-dependent membrane-associated and cytoplasmic antioxidant factors than rat liver. Peroxidative damage to membranes has been hypothesized as a mechanism of tissue damage in muscular dystrophy. However, neither the chicken, mouse, nor rat had significant activities of the antioxidant factors in muscle. There was also no significant difference between normal and dystrophic chicken livers in the activity of the antioxidant factors associated with the microsomes or the cytoplasm, nor of the liver microsomal factor in normal and dystrophic mice. The results do not support an important role for the antioxidant factors in the pathogenesis of muscular dystrophy, and raise questions as to whether such factors are physiologically important in species other than rat or in tissues other than liver.