الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Hypercholesterolemia is the presence of high levels of cholesterol and/or lipoproteins in the blood and it occurs due to a combination of environmental and genetic factors. Hypercholesterolemia is a major contributor to many diseases including atherosclerosis, heart attacks, diabetes mellitus, and stroke. Also, hypercholesterolemia may have a great responsibility for drug toxicity through the modification of drug transporters gene expression and leading to the accumulation of drugs in human body (Hall, 2000). Drug transporters are membrane-bound proteins that play a key role in the absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion of drugs. Two major classes of drug transporters were identified; the ATP-binding cassette (ABC) and the solute linked carrier (SLC) (Couture et al., 2006). ABC proteins represent the largest family of trans-membrane transporters that are most abundantly expressed in organs with high metabolic rates (Mishra et al., 2019). A variety of substances such as small organic or inorganic molecules, sterols, metal ions, polypeptides and proteins can cross cellular membranes either in or out of the cells via ABC transporters that are serving as importer or exporter, respectively upon hydrolysis of ATP (Liu et al., 2019). |