Aim: Alcohol addiction is one of the leading reasons of liver diseases in many countries. Hepatic steatosis, alcoholic hepatitis, hepatic fibrosis and cirrhosis can be mentioned among the diseases resulting due to alcohol addiction. In recent years, studies have been focused on effect of oxidant stress, in the process of pathological changes and mentioned diseases caused by alcohol. In this study, 25 alcohol addict males were taken as the study group and 25 healthy, non-alcoholic males were taken as control, and oxidant-anti-oxidant status of erythrocytes was evaluated.

Materials and Methods: It was measured erythrocyte levels of malondialdehyde, (MDA), which is an indicator of lipid peroxidation, nitric oxide (NO) levels, and activity of xanthine oxidase (XO), which are some of the reasons of oxidant stress, superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) activities, which are intracellular antioxidant enzymes, were evaluated.

Results: While MDA (p:0<01) were found to be higher in the study group than the control, there was no statistically significant difference of NO levels and XO activity (p<0,05) between the groups. Erythrocytes SOD (p<0.05) and CAT (p<0.01) activities were found to be higher in the alcohol group than the control.

Conclusion: According to these results, it was concluded that alcohol addiction influenced oxidant and antioxidant balance of erythrocytes, and changes related with lipid peroxidation might have a role in diseases and complications related with alcohol.