METHODS
We performed this study regarding the recommendations put forward via the Declaration of Helsinki. The study protocol was approved by the Harran University Faculty of Medicine Ethics Committee and each participant gave written, informed consent. 95 patients, including 45 patients over the age of 18 who were diagnosed with acute PTE (non-massive and submassive), and 50 healthy volunteers over the age of 18 with a normal physical examination, who applied to the Harran University Faculty of Medicine Chest Diseases Polyclinic in 2019, were included in our study.
We followed the following exclusion criteria in these cases. Patients with neurological diseases, patients with diabetes, patients with cardiovascular disease, patients with cancer, patients with rheumatoid arthritis, patients with kidney disease, individuals with a history of drug, smoking, alcohol use for any reason within the last 7 days, patients with infectious diseases, other respiratory diseases, those with hypoxia, anoxia, metabolic and different systemic diseases were excluded.
Venous blood samples from the patients and healthy controls in the study were collected. We centrifuged plasma blood samples at 1500 rpm for 10 min and we got serum. The separated serum was immediately placed in Eppendorf tubes, and we stored these samples at −80°C until used.
Thiol/disulphide homeostasis evaluation had performed by a fully automatic method, developed by Erel and Neselioglu [7]. Disulphide bonds are first reduced with sodium borohydride to create functional thiol groups. Unused reducing agent, sodium borohydride, was removed with formaldehyde to prevent reduction of 5,5’ dithiobis (2 nitro benzoic acid) (DTNB). All thiol groups, including reduced and native thiol groups, were later fixed by reactions with DTNB. Half of the difference between total thiol and native thiol determined the dynamic disulphide amount. After determining native and total thiols, disulphide levels, disulphide/total thiol, disulphide/native thiol, and native thiol/total thiol ratios were calculated.