In order to clarify the relationship between Astaxanaxin's antioxidant effect and cell apoptosis, cell survival rate, accumulation of reactive oxygen species, cell apoptosis, protein content and relative gene expression were detected by CCK-8, reactive oxygen probe staining, flow cytometry, western blotting, and real time quantitative fluorescence PCR to explore the effect of astaxanthin pretreatment on oxidative stress induced by H2O2 in HeLa cells. The results showed that the cell activity of astaxanaxin pretreatment group was 29.54% higher than that of the control group, and it could reduce H2O2-induced reactive oxygen species to the control levels, meanwhile, it can also increase the Nrf2 protein expression by 3 times, and increase the relative expression of the catalase gene by 1.5 times. The results indicated that astaxanthin could effectively alleviate the oxidative stress of HeLa cells induced by H2O2, thereby inhibiting apoptosis.
