Protective effect of quercetin on bisphenol A-caused alterations in succinate dehydrogenase and adenosine triphosphatase activities in liver and kidney of mice.

Bisphenol A, a monomer of polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins, is found in food packaging, can-coating chemicals and in dental sealants. Bisphenol A is released from polycarbonate flasks during autoclaving or from lacquer coatings in food cans, showing estrogenicity for human breast cancer MCF-7 cells (1, 2). This compound may be released into food, reach circulating blood and can cause genotoxic and cytotoxic effects (3). Bisphenol A with a week estrogen-like feature has been implicated to cause a variety of effects on reproduction and development in animals, including effects at doses well below those showing adverse effects in routine toxicity studies (4). Early exposure of rodents to BPA caused increased susceptibility to both mammary and prostate tumorigenesis (5, 6). Because of its widespread use and ubiquitous presence in the environment, the potential for human exposure to BPA is high. Indeed, BPA has been detected in multiple human tissue compartments including serum, follicular fluid, and amniotic fluid (7, 8), urine (9), breast milk (10), saliva (11) and adipose tissue (12). Quercetin belongs to an extensive class of polyphenolic flavonoid compounds almost ubiquitous in plants and plant food sources. Quercetin is the major bioflavonoid in the human diet. Its reputation as an antioxidant stems from the reactivity of phenolic compounds with free radical species to form phenoxy radicals which are considerably less reactive. Quercetin is helpful in the recovery of N-diethylnitrosamine induced carcinogenesis (13), human leukemia cell (14), streptozotocin induced diabetes (15), chronic renal failure and reactive oxygen species (ROS) induced DNA damage (16). Since the flavonoids are well-tolerated, widely studied and least toxic, we had chosen quercetin to ameliorate the changes caused by bisphenol A in energy metabolism in liver and kidney of mice.