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Serum oxidant and antioxidant status of patients with chronic tension-type headache: possible effects of medical treatment

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Abstract

Tension-type headache (TTH) is one of the most common and costly primary types of headache in clinical practice, with an unknown etiology. This study assessed to investigate oxidative and antioxidative status in patients with chronic tension-type headache (CTTH), and to evaluate possible effect of medical treatment. The study included 41 CTTH patients and 19 age- and sex-matched healthy subjects without headache as controls. The CTTH group comprised 20 patients receiving treatment and 21 untreated patients. We evaluated oxidant/antioxidant status by measuring serum malondialdehyde (MDA) levels and activities of antioxidant enzymes, namely glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) and catalase (CAT). Comparison of oxidative parameters in the patient and control groups revealed significantly lower CAT activities and higher MDA level and GSH-Px activities in the patient group. In the CTTH group, serum CAT activities were found to be significantly decreased in patient groups, while serum MDA levels and GSH-Px activities were found to be higher in the untreated CTTH patients. These findings suggest that oxidative stress is increased in the patients with CTTH, and medical treatment abolishes the stress in part. It has been concluded that antioxidant support might be helpful for the patients with CTTH to prevent oxidant stress and peroxidation damages further.

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Acknowledgments

The authors had no funding sources for this study.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed on human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurology, Ankara Education and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey

    Burcu Gökçe Çokal, Hafize Nalan Güneş, Selda Keskin Güler & Tahir Kurtuluş Yoldaş

  2. Ministry of Health, Directorate of Health Services, Ankara, Turkey

    Bilal Aytaç

  3. Biochemistry Laboratory, Public Health Institute of Turkey, Ankara, Turkey

    Zahide Esra Durak

  4. Department of Biochemistry, Selçuk University Faculty of Medicine, Konya, Turkey

    Bahadır Öztürk

  5. Department of Biochemistry, Ankara University Faculty of Medicine , Ankara, Turkey

    İlker Durak

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  1. Burcu Gökçe Çokal
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  2. Bilal Aytaç
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  3. Zahide Esra Durak
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  4. Hafize Nalan Güneş
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  5. Bahadır Öztürk
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  6. Selda Keskin Güler
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  7. İlker Durak
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  8. Tahir Kurtuluş Yoldaş
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Correspondence to Burcu Gökçe Çokal.

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Gökçe Çokal, B., Aytaç, B., Durak, Z.E. et al. Serum oxidant and antioxidant status of patients with chronic tension-type headache: possible effects of medical treatment. Neurol Sci 36, 1771–1775 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-015-2240-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-015-2240-z

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