Hydrogen Water Helps Repair Kidney Damage in Diabetic Rats
- Authors
- Olly lndrajani, Ekowati Retnaningtyas, Hendry Santoso, Veronica Verina Setyabudhi
- Journal
- AIP Conference Proceedings
- Year
- 2021
- DOI
- 10.1063/5.0053002
- Study Type
- Rat
- Outcome
- Positive
- Peer Reviewed
- Yes
- Country
- Indonesia
- Health Condition
- Diabetic Nephropathy
- Body System
- Renal
TL;DR
Drinking hydrogen water improved kidney damage in diabetic rats, especially when combined with the diabetes drug metformin.
Key Finding
Hydrogen water significantly reduced kidney tissue damage in diabetic rats, with effects that were enhanced when combined with the diabetes medication metformin.
Summary
This study tested whether hydrogen water could help repair kidney damage in rats with diabetes. Researchers gave some diabetic rats hydrogen water, some the diabetes drug metformin, some both, and some neither for two weeks. When they examined the rats' kidneys under a microscope, the rats that received hydrogen water showed less kidney damage compared to untreated diabetic rats, and the combination of hydrogen water plus metformin worked even better.
Practical Takeaway
This is early-stage research in animals only, so it cannot yet tell us whether hydrogen water would help people with diabetes-related kidney disease. The study suggests hydrogen water may help protect kidney tissue by reducing oxidative stress, but human studies would be needed before any health recommendations could be made.
Abstract
Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a renal microvascular abnormality resulting from chronic complications of diabetes mellitus (DM). The main cause of DN is a chronic condition of hyperglycemia which induces oxidative stress in the microvascular system and causes progressive renal failure. Hydrogen water (HW) shows potential in reducing ROS, and anti-inflammatory. This study aims to develop HW therapy in the improvement of renal histopathology in streptozotocin-induced DM rats. DM induction in rats with a HFD for four weeks then injected with STZ (35 mg/kg BW) intraperitonially. DM rats were divided into 4 groups: DM; DM+Met (DM+metformin dose 45 mg/kg BW); DM+HW; and DM+Met+HW (DM+combination of metformin and HW). Rats were treated with HW or metformin for fourteen days and given orally per day. At the end of the treatment, rats were dissected, and the kidneys were collected. Renal histopathological improvement was evaluated by scoring the H&E-stained kidney sections, then analyzed using ANOVA (p < 0.05). The results showed that HW therapy and a combination of HW with metformin were able to significantly improve renal microvascular damage (p < 0.05) compared to the DM rat group. Hydrogen water has the potential to treat DM chronic complications through renal microvascular repair in STZ-induced diabetic rats.