Frontiers in Bioscience-Landmark (FBL) is published by IMR Press from Volume 26 Issue 5 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.
Phosphatidylcholine is the most abundant phospholipid constituent of cell membranes and choline is a quaternary amine required for phosphatidylcholine synthesis. The impairment of membrane functions is considered as an indication of oxidative damage. In order to kinetically analyze the time course of the pathogenesis of renal necrosis following to choline deficiency in weanling rats, we determined markers of membrane lipid peroxidation (thiobarbituric acid reactive substances; TBARS and hydroperoxide-induced chemiluminescence (BOOH-CL) ) and studied the histopathological damage. Plasma TBARS (t1/2 = 2.5 days) was an early indicator of systemic oxidative stress, likely involving liver and kidney. The levels of TBARS an BOOH-CL increased by 80% and by 183%, respectively, in kidney homogenates with t1/2 = 1.5 days and 4 days, respectively. The levels of BOOH-CL were statistically higher in rats fed a choline-deficient diet at day 6, in a mixture of membranes (from plasmatic, smooth and rough endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi), in mitochondrial membranes and in lysosomal membranes. The results indicate that choline deficiency produces oxidative damage in kidney subcellular membranes. Necrosis involved mainly convoluted tubules and appeared with a t1/2 = 5.5 days. An increase in the production of reactive oxygen species, triggered by NADH overproduction in the mitochondrial dysfunction associated with choline deficiency appears as one of the pathogenic mechanism of mitochondrial and cellular oxidative damage in choline-deficiency.