Research Article Rice Germosprout Extract Protects Erythrocytes from Hemolysis and the Aorta, Brain, Heart, and Liver Tissues from Oxidative Stress In Vitro Shahdat Hossain, Sujan Bhowmick, Marzan Sarkar, Mehedi Hassan, Jakir Hussain, Saiful Islam, and Hussain Shahjalal Laboratory of Alternative Medicine and Behavioral Neurosciences, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Dhaka 1342, Bangladesh Correspondence should be addressed to Shahdat Hossain; shahdat@dhaka.net Received 28 March 2016; Accepted 16 May 2016 Academic Editor: Yoshiji Ohta Copyright © 2016 Shahdat Hossain et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Identifying dietary alternatives for artifcial antioxidants capable of boosting antihemolytic and antioxidative defense has been an important endeavor in improving human health. In the present study, we studied antihemolytic and antioxidative efects of germosprout (i.e., the germ part along with sprouted stems plus roots) extract prepared from the pregerminated rice. Te extract contained considerable amounts of antioxidant -carotene (414 ± 12 ng/g of extract) and phytochemicals such as total polyphenols (12.0 ± 1.1 mg gallic acid equivalent/g of extract) and favonoids (11.0 ± 1.4 mg catechin equivalent/g of extract). Te antioxidant potential of the extract was assessed by its DPPH- (2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl-) free radical scavenging activity where we observed that germosprout extract had considerable antioxidative potentials. To evaluate antihemolytic efect of the extract, freshly prepared erythrocytes were incubated with either peroxynitrite or Fenton’s reagent in the absence or presence of the extract. We observed that erythrocytes pretreated with the extract exhibited reduced degree of in vitro hemolysis. To support the proposition that germosprout extract could act as a good antioxidative agent, we also induced in vitro oxidative stress in erythrocyte membranes and in the aorta, brain, heart, and liver tissue homogenates in the presence of the extract. As expected, germosprout extract decreased oxidative stress almost to the same extent as that of vitamin E, as measured by lipid peroxide levels, in all the mentioned tissues. We conclude that rice germosprout extract could be a good natural source of antioxidants to reduce oxidative stress-induced hemolysis and damage of blood vessels and other tissues. 1. Introduction Oxidative stress is essentially an imbalance between the production of free radicals and the ability of the body to counteract or detoxify their harmful efects through neu- tralization by its own antioxidants [1, 2]. Oxidative stress has been reported as the contributing factor in various dis- eases such as infammatory diseases, ischemic heart diseases, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, stroke, various liver dis- eases, hemochromatosis, neurodegenerative disorders, and smoking-related diseases [3–8] and in the impairment of erythrocyte functions including hemolysis [9]. An excess of oxidative stress can lead to the oxidation of lipids and proteins, which is associated with changes in their structures and functions. Te recent growth in the knowledge of free radicals and their detrimental efects on human health is leading a medical revolution, promising a new era of disease management [10–13]. Ironically, oxygen, an element indispensable for life, under certain situations has deleterious efects on the human body [12, 13]. Most of the potentially harmful efects of oxygen are due to the formation of a number of chemical compounds, known as reactive oxygen species (ROS) or reactive nitrogen species (RNS), which have a tendency to donate electron to other cellular components. Recently, study of free radicals and antioxidants has provided important understanding of disease mechanisms, thus paving the way for their prevention and treatments [12, 13]. However, synthetic antioxidants have been reported to be harmful Hindawi Publishing Corporation Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine Volume 2016, Article ID 9587020, 9 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/9587020