Glycoprotein (90 kDa) isolated from Opuntia ficus-indica var. saboten MAKINO lowers plasma lipid level through scavenging of intracellular radicals in Triton WR-1339-induced mice.

The Opuntia ficus-indica var. saboten MAKINO (OFI) has been traditionally used as health food and herbal agent in folk medicine in Korea. In this study, we investigated whether the OFI glycoprotein has antioxidative activity and hypolipidemic effect on Triton WR-1339-induced A/J mice. The OFI glycoprotein inhibits the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated by glucose/glucose oxidase (G/GO) in BNL CL.2 cells. With its antioxidative property, the mice were orally administered in the OFI glycoprotein [50 mg/kg body weight (BW)] for two weeks. Our finding resulted in a significant decrease of plasma lipid levels in Triton WR-1339-treated mice such as total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), and low-density lipoprotein (LDL). Indeed, mice which induced by Triton WR-1339 were significantly increased the levels of TC, TG and LDL, whereas the high-density lipoprotein (HDL) level obviously decreased. However, the values were reversed at pretreatment with OFI glycoprotein in Triton WR-1339-treated mice. The data also showed that pretreatment with OFI glycoprotein resulted in decrease of thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances (TBARS) level and in increase of nitric oxide (NO) amount in presence of Triton WR-1339-treated mice, while the activities of antioxidant enzyme [superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and glutathione peroxidase (GPx)] were augmented. Therefore, we speculate that the OFI glycoprotein would be effective in lowering of plasma lipid levels.