Elevation of the level of lipid peroxidation associated with hepatic injury in LEC mutant rat.

Long-Evans Cinnamon (LEC) mutant rat, which spontaneously develops a chronically necrotizing hepatic injury at 4-5 months of age, exhibits an excess hepatic copper accumulation. The hepatic injury was completely correlated to the excess hepatic copper accumulation in backcross progenies, supporting the previous hypothesis that the copper cytotoxicity causes the hepatic injury in LEC rat liver. The levels of the lipid peroxidation in symptomatic LEC rats at 4 months of age were significantly higher than those of age-matched asymptomatic LEC and normal rats. These results suggest that excessively accumulated copper provokes hepatic injury through initiating the lipid peroxidation.