During renal transplantation, the kidney remains without blood flow for a period of time. The following reperfusion of this ischemic kidney causes functional and structural injury. Formation of oxygen-derived free radicals (OFR) and subsequent lipid peroxidation (LP) has been implicated as the causative factors of these injuries. Vitamin E is known to be the main endogenous antioxidant that stabilizes cell membranes by interfering with LP. The present study was designed to examine the role of ischemic-preconditioning (repeated brief periods of ischemia, IPC) in prevention of renal injury caused by ischemia-reperfusion (IR) in rats. IPC included sequential clamping of the right renal artery for 5 min and release of the clamp for another 5 min for a 3 cycles. IR was induced by 30 min ischemia followed by 10 min reperfusion. Four groups of male rats were used: Control, IPC, IR and IPC-IR. Vitamin E was measured by HPLC in renal venous plasma and tissue. Renal function was assessed by serum creatinine and BUN levels. Renal damage was assessed in sections stained with Haematoxylin and Eosin. In the IR group there was a significant decrease in vitamin E in plasma and tissue (p,0.05) plus a reduction in function demonstrated by an increase in serum creatinine levels. In the IPC-IR group, vitamin E concentration was significantly higher than in the IR group (p,0.01), but no significant difference in serum BUN and creatinine between IR and IPC-IR group were detected. Histological evaluation showed an improvement in the IPC-IR group compared to IR alone. In this study, IPC preserved vitamin E levels, but it could not markedly improve renal function in the early phase (1-2 h) of reperfusion. IPC may be a useful method for antioxidant preservation in organ transplantation.