Garlic ameliorates hyperlipidemia in chronic aminonucleoside nephrosis

Nephrotic syndrome (NS) is characterized by proteinuria, oxidative stress and endogenous hyperlipidemia. Hyperlipidemia and oxidative stress may be involved in coronary heart disease and the progression of renal damage in these patients. Garlic has been suggested to be beneficial in various disease states. Some of the beneficial effects of garlic may be secondary to its hypolipidemic and antioxidant properties. Therefore, the effect of a 2% garlic diet on acute and chronic experimental NS induced by puromycin aminonucleoside (PAN) was studied in this work. Acute NS was induced by a single injection of PAN to rats which were sacrificed 10 days later. Chronic NS was induced by repeated injections of PAN to rats which were sacrificed 84 days after the first injection. Garlic treatment was unable to modify proteinuria in either acute or chronic NS, and hypercholesterolemia and hypertriglyceridemia in acute NS. However, garlic treatment diminished significantly total-cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol and triglycerides, but not HDL-cholesterol in chronic NS. Garlic induced no change in the percentage of sclerotic glomeruli in chronic NS and a significative decrease on the percentage of sclerotic area of these glomeruli (33 ± 3% in NS+Garlic group vs. 47 ± 4% in NS group, p = 0.0126). The enhanced in vivo renal H₂O₂ production and the diminished renal Cu, Zn-SOD and catalase activities in acute NS, and the decreased renal catalase activity in chronic NS were not prevented by garlic treatment. These data indicate that garlic treatment ameliorates hyperlipidemia and renal damage in chronic NS which is unrelated to proteinuria or antioxidant enzymes.