The effect of chloroquine induced hypoglycemia on the levels of major blood serum proteins in diabetic mice

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Laboratory of Molecular Cell Biology, Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Assiut university, Assiut 71516, Egypt

Abstract

Chloroquine is a drug derived from cinchona bark has been used for long
time to treat different diseases including malaria and accidently it was proved
to lower hyperglycemia. Diabetes mellitus is accompanied with many disorders
including blood serum proteins levels. Taking into consideration that insulin
administration controls hyperglycemia of diabetic patients but it is not
sufficient to restore the level of blood serum proteins. In the present work we
compared the action of chloroquine and insulin on major blood serum proteins of
alloxan induced diabetes. Mice were injected once with alloxan and then treated
either with chloroquine or insulin. Another category of mice were fed with high
glucose diet for short or long period to induce hyperglycemia independent of
insulin level. Major blood serum proteins namely; transferrin, albumin,
antitrypsin, acid glycoprotein and immunoglobulin G were estimated by SDS-PAGE
and Image J software. Our results showed that chloroquine and insulin were
independently effective in lowering fasting blood glucose level in alloxan
treated animals. Also chloroquine significantly raises blood serum insulin
level in diabetic animals without exogenous insulin treatment. Chloroquine
restored partially or completely the level of transferrin, antitrypsin, acid
glycoprotein and immunoglobulin G significantly and more efficiently than
insulin. Both chloroquine and insulin had no influence on restoring the level
of albumin in diabetic mice. The results indicate that chloroquine treatment
may be a good adjuvant therapy with insulin to control diabetes and its
complications

Keywords