Wojciech Dabros(1), Bozena Kajda(2), Anna M. Kordowiak(2)

Control and STZ-Diabetic Rat Liver Golgi Complexes under the Influence of Bis(2,2'-Bipyridine)Oxovanadium(IV) Sulphate. The Morphological Investigation

1)Department of Clinical and Experimental Pathomorphology, Collegium Medicum,
2)Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Department of General Biochemistry, Jagiellonian University, Krakow

Abstract

Identification of a vanadium compound with the highest efficacy and least toxicity is the main scientific problem in diabetes treatment. All vanadium complexes, both inorganic and organic, apart from improving physiological and biochemical diabetic parameters, show more or less toxic effects in living organisms. For this reason we decided to test a new vanadium compound: bis(2,2'-bipyridine)oxovanadium(IV), [VO(bpy)2], not used or described so far. This paper stressed morphological alterations of rat liver Golgi apparatus originated from control or streptozotocin (STZ)-diabetic rats treated with 1.8mmol VO(bpy)2 solution in 0.5% NaCl as drinking liquid for 7 days and compared them with a parallel biochemical study. There was a correlation between the activity of Golgi marker enzyme i.e. galactosyl transferase and morphology of this organelle. In control rats treatment with VO(bpy)2 caused drastic changes, in many cases leading to a complete destruction of liver Golgi apparatus. In STZ-diabetic liver of rats treated with VO(bpy)2 the Golgi apparatus showed characteristic of untreated diabetes arching or even twisting of stack cisternae but improvement of the secretory activity (dilatation of cisternae edges, some secretory vacuoles and vesicles). In our opinion, the parallel action of two drugs: STZ combined with VO(bpy)2, relieves or even eliminate harmful effects of each compound alone.