The Investigation of the Oxidative Stress-Related Parameters in High Doses Methotrexate-Induced Albino Wistar Rats

Methotrexate (MTX) is used as a chemotherapeutic agent used to treat many cancer types. Methotrexate was known for its toxic effects involving most of the body organs including liver, kidney, intestines and blood components. The aim of the present study was to investigate the antioxidant status during oxidative stress via biological, biochemical and haematological parameters in rats subjected to oral high-doses of methotrexate. Forty male albino rats were equally divided at random into four groups; the first group was the control and the other three groups were treated per os for 7 days with three different doses (1/10, 2/10 and 3/10 of an LD50) of MTX respectively. The methotrexate-treatment of rats caused critical changes in the biological, biochemical and haematological markers. Mainly, an increase in the organo-somatic indexes (organo-megaly), a decrease in urine output value (nephotoxicity) and also a perturbation in most blood components (haematoxicity) were appeared. In addition, MTX has a prooxidant effect, which was indicated by a decrease of the antioxidant parameters in different studied tissues. In view of these results, a close relationship was shown between the increasing MTX-doses and the oxidative stress intensity, characterized by perturbations in biochemical and haematological markers.