Fucoidan is a sulfated polysaccharide purified from brown algae including, Fucus vesiculosus and Fucus vesiculosus and Laminaria japonica. It has a variety of biological effects including antioxidant and antitumor activity. In this study, we investigated the radioprotective effects of fucoidan on normal human newborn foreskin fibroblast cell line HS68. To evaluate the effects of fucoidan, we assayed cell viability in vitro and change of blood cells such as thrombocytes, erythrocytes, leukocytes and hematocrit with radiation. In a viability assay, fucoidan increased dose-dependently the recovery of radiation-induced damage by 8Gy at all tested dose (10, 50 and 100 μg/ml). The survival rate of HS68 cells by pre-treatment with fucoidan was increased by 2 times more than it's compared with untreated cells. Furthermore, fucoidan protected the change of blood cells as follows; the thrombocyte of the irradiated controls had fallen to 35% compared with the initial values, the thrombocyte counts in fucoidan pre-treated group was recovered to 49% at the day 14. The Hematocrit level of fucoidan pre-treated group showed the recovery activity by 72% at the day 14, while hematocrit level of irradiated control without fucoidan fell to 61%. In case of erythrocyte level, the radiated controls was consistently maintained by the end of experiment at the range of 60~70%, on the other hand, the erythrocyte counts of fucoidan pretreated group gently increased the level of erythrocyte at the range of 82~90%. These results may provide valuable and useful information in the field of radio-protection.

No abstract