The effect of combined antioxidant supplement on serum lipids levels in female Patients with rheumatoid arthritis

Background: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is one of the autoimmune diseases with unknown etiology that its prevalence in females to males is 3 to 1. This disease has positive relationship with occurrence of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular diseases are taken into account for 50% of death in RA. Regarding the recent researches, antioxidant supplements may have important role in serum lipids reduction and atherosclerosis prevention, due to control oxidative stress. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of combined antioxidant supplement on serum lipids in RA patients. Materials and Methods: A pre-post study was conducted in a 3 month period on 40 female RA patients which receiving daily one Selenplus capsule (selenium 50mcg, zinc 8mg, vitamin A 400mcg, vitaminC 125mg and vitaminE 40mg). Five ml venous blood was taken from all participants and serum levels of total cholesterol (TChol), triglyceride (TG), high density lipoprotein (HDL-c) were measured with enzymatic kits and low density lipoprotein (LDL-c) levels were calculated by Freidwald formula before and after the intervention. Data were analyzed by Shapiro-Wilk test and histogram with normal distribution for normal distribution, and for differences between pre-post data SPSS software version 13.5 was used. Results: Out of 40 patients, 39 completed the study. There were significant differences among TChol, TG, TG/HDL-c and LDL-c values (p<0.01, p<0.001, p<0.001, p<0.001 respectively) but no significant differences were seen among HDL-c and HDL-c/LDL-c . Conclusion: The daily intake of combined antioxidant supplement may have positive effect in improving lipid profile and it may reduce atherosclerosis risk in female RA patients.