ve To study the effects of extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields (ELF EMFs) on
lipid peroxidation of
myocardium
in rats. Methods The activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and the contents of malonaldehyde (MDA) of the
myocardium tissue of rats under the different conditions such as healthy state, my-ocardiac ischemic state and lead-exposure state before and after ELF EMFs exposure were determined respectively. Results ELF EMFs exposure didn't induce significant changes of SOD activities and MDA contents in myocardium of healthy rats, but caused the SOD activities of myocardium of lead-exposure rats to decrease from (31.24?1.08)U/mg prot before exposure to ELF EMFs to (29.20?1.14) U/mg prot after exposure to ELF EMFs (P<0.01), and in-duced the increase of MDA content of myocardium of lead-exposure rats from (1.24?.21)nmol/mg prot before ex-posure to ELF EMFs to (1.71?.63)nmol/mg prot after exposure to ELF EMFs. The SOD activity of ischemic myocardium pretreated by coronary artery ligation increased from (25.46?.99) U/mg prot before exposure to ELF EMFs to (29.40?3.19) U/mg prot after exposure to ELF EMFs (P<0.01) . The MDA contents of ischemic my-ocardium pretreated by coronary artery ligation increased from (1.83 + 0.59) nmol/mg prot before exposure to ELF EMFs to (2.17?1.05)nmol/mg prot after exposure to ELF EMFs. Conclusion The combination of ELF EMFs and lead exposure did damage to the myocardium tissue, probably through interfering the metabolism of free radical and enhancing the
lipid peroxidation. On the contrary ELF EMFs could alleviate the lipid peroxidation of ischemic my-ocardium.