Potential artifacts in TBARS measurement in tissues from animals treated with antioxidants.

When measuring endogenous TBARS levels from tissues of animals (in vitro) the presence of exogenous antioxidants in the tissue is likely to interfere with the TBARS assay to give artificially low values. Such low values do not then reflect protection against peroxidation in vivo. The type and extent of the reduction in TBARS values depend on the TBARS assay conditions. Firstly there appears to be an initial (probably iron induced) burst of peroxidation during homogenisation, which is antioxidant susceptible. In addition added TBARS products are formed during the final heating stage in methods which retain membrane bound reactants throughout the assay, and this step is also susceptible to antioxidant presence.