Treatment of Nutritional Muscular Dystrophy in Lambs

∗ E-mail: [email protected] ABSTRACT This study was applied on a total number of 40 native breed lambs from Dakahlia governorate, their ages being ranged from 5 to 26 days, in order to declare the effects of nutritional muscular dystrophy as an oxidative stress in lambs and the effect of vitamin C administration in enhancing the treatment of Nutritional Muscular Dystrophy (NMD), decreasing oxidative stress and their correlation with glutathione in diseased lambs. The used lambs were allotted into four groups. Group 1 included apparently clinically healthy animals (n-10) and was the control group. The 2 group (suffering from NMD) was treated by Vitamin E–selenium alone (n-10). The 3 group (suffering from NMD) was treated by vitamin E –selenium and vitamin C (n-10) and the 4 group (suffering from NMD) was treated by vitamin C only (n-10). Two blood samples were obtained from each lamb, before and after treatment, and subjected to the laboratory investigation. The results revealed that there was significant increase in the oxidative stress markers with significant reduction in the antioxidant levels of diseased lambs. After the treatment, there were improvement of the general health condition and disappearance of the clinical signs within 4-7 days in group 2 and group 3, in contrast with the 4 group in which the clinical signs persisted even after treatment. The obtained results concerning blood and serum biochemical analysis revealed that NMD was playing an important role as an oxidative stressor in lambs. Moreover, antioxidant mixture of vitamin E-selenium and ascorbate proved to be more powerful and effective in the treatment of diseased lambs with NMD and decreasing the resulted oxidative stress.