ISSN 2409-4943. Ukr. Biochem. J., 2019, Vol. 91, N 6 59 UDC 577.115:616.37+616.379-008.64 CARNITINE EFFECTS ON SERUM AND PANCREAS INFLAMMATORY RESPONSE IN DIABETIC RATS Y. MASOUMI-ARDAKANI 1 , H. FALLAH 2 , B. SHAHOUZEHI 3 1 Physiology Research Center, Institute of Basic and Clinical Physiology Sciences, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran; 2 Student Research Committee, School of Medicine, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran; 3 Cardiovascular Research Center, Institute of Basic and Clinical Physiology Sciences, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran;  e-mail: bshahouzehi@yahoo.com, bshahouzehi@gmail.com Received: 08 May 2019; Accepted: 18 October 2019 Diabetes is a group of disorders characterized by elevated blood glucose and insulin secretion defect. Previous studies have reported L-carnitine benefcial and hypoglycemic efects in diabetic models. L-carnitine anti-infammatory properties in diabetes were not assessed perfectly, and there is a lack of information about this matter. Therefore, we designed this study and evaluated L-carnitine diferent doses supplementation on pro-infammatory cytokines in STZ-induced diabetic rats’ pancreas and serum. We selected 48 male rats (200 ± 10 g) and randomly divided them into six groups (n = 8). Group 1, control; group 2, Diabetic control (DC); groups 3-6, STZ-induced diabetic rats which received L-carnitine diferent doses as follow; 300, 200, 100 and 50 mg/kg/day by intraperitoneal injection for 5 weeks. When the study ended, serum and pancreas samples were collected and cytokines levels were measured by specifc ELISA kits. Our results showed that in diabetic rats, pro-infammatory cytokines levels were elevated. Two L-carnitine doses 300 and 200 mg/ kg/day showed benefcial efects and 300 mg/kg/day showed more efective and signifcant efects than other doses. The 300 mg/kg signifcantly reduced IL-1β and IL-6 levels in pancreas and serum. Our data proved the protective efects of intraperitoneal L-carnitine administration against diabetes and infammation in diabetic rats. Indeed, L-carnitine long term supplementation through the intraperitoneal injection can be considered as a good and safe therapeutic strategy in diabetes. K e y w o r d s: L-carnitine, IL-1β, IL-6, TNF-α, diabetic rat. D iabetes is a chronic and endocrine disor- der. It was estimated that it afects about 438 million people by 2030worldwide [1]. There are oxidative stress and infammation in dia- betic patients, along with diabetes development and progress [2-5]. There are two main categories’ of diabetes, and there is a diferent mechanism behind each one. Type 1 diabetes (T1D) considered as an autoimmune disease with almost no insulin secre- tion and type 2 diabetes (T2D) which is caused by insulin resistance [6]. In fact, infammation can be blamed for being involved in both. There are studies which confrm the participation of infammation in diabetes pathophysiology [7]. In T1D, autoimmune antibodies attack pancreas and damage β-cell, on the other hands, in T2D, there is chronic hyperglycemia and lipotoxicity, which result in elevation of infam- matory cytokines [8-10]. Cytokines are small glycoproteins which are involved in infammation and immunity. Two im- portant cytokines in the infammatory response are interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) [11]. Infammations have indisputable ef- fects on β-cell insulin secretion and there are shared of evidence which showed that infammation and pro-inflammatory cytokines are involved in the © 2019 Masoumi-Ardakani Y. et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. doi: https://doi.org/10.15407/ubj91.06.059