Anacardic acid's antioxidant effects on the frog palate mucociliary epithelium.

Abstract

Studies have shown that particulate pollutants stimulate the production of free radicals in vitro and respiratory exposure to particulate matter resulting mainly from diesel oxidation leads to reduced levels of glutathione in the mucociliary epithelium. These studies therefore suggest that deficiency of antioxidants such as glutathione, coupled with increased production of oxidizing agents, are important factors involved in the injury of the respiratory system as a function of air pollution. In this sense, becomes interesting research aimed to study the effects of antioxidants in the mucociliary epithelium, which is the main mechanism of protection of the upper airways, in order to seek treatment and prevention options to the evils resulting from air pollution. Thus, the aim is to reduce its high impact on morbidity and mortality currently observed, especially in urban populations. Among the various antioxidants have been described in scientific circles, it was chosen for this study to evaluate the effect of pretreatment of frog palate with anacardic acid, a substance found in cashews, and whose potential antioxidant has been described in previous studies. According to Kubo et al. (2006) and Correia et al (2006), anacardic acid may act to protect tissue against oxidative stress due to its ability to suppress pro-oxidative enzymes, involved in the production of reactive oxygen species (Ha and Kubo, 2005; Sun et al., 2006). Given these results, we will analyze in the present study the interaction between the anacardic acid and hydrogen peroxide, a powerful oxidizing agent, using the epithelium of frog palate mucociliary epithelium as a model. The research will be conducted in two stages: 1) Study of the optimal concentration of hydrogen peroxide necessary to inhibit mucociliary transport, without however causing irreversible damage to the epithelium. 2) Study the effect of pretreatment with different concentrations of anacardic acid in frog palates exposed to optimal concentration of hydrogen peroxide obtained in the first phase of the experiment. We will look for such purposes, the physical and chemical changes resulting from exposure to hydrogen peroxide in palate previously treated with anacardic acid. Thus, we will study the mucociliary transport, ciliary beat frequency and histology of frog palates used in the study. We aim thus to test the protective effect of anacardic acid the epithelium of the frog palate in order to approach the understanding of mechanisms leading to the reduction of the effect of pollution on the respiratory system.