Oxidative Stress: a Primer by IntegraCell

Oxidative stress is well known to be involved in the pathogenesis of lifestyle-related diseases, including aging, atherosclerosis, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, ischemic diseases, neurodegeneration and/or malignancies.

Oxidative stress has long been defined as highly detrimental in humans as oxygen free radicals attack then destroy biological molecules such as lipids, proteins, and DNA. However, oxidative stress also has been shown to play a useful role in physiologic adaptation and in intracellular signal transduction regulation.

Therefore, a more useful definition of oxidative stress may be “a state where oxidative forces exceed the antioxidant systems due to loss of the balance between them.” The balance is not perfect, however, so that some free radicals-mediated damage occurs continuously.