Oxidative stress and ischemia

In the mid 1950s, a small number of scientists first postulated the role of oxidative stress and oxygenderived free radicals in the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying various types of human disease, including ischemic disease. However, before 1975, because of the technical difficulty of measuring the amounts of free radicals and quantitating oxidative damage, it was very difficult to prove that free radicals could contribute to cell pathology. For that reason, the importance of oxidative stress in biological systems was not definitely recognized until the early 1980s, when measurement of short-lived oxygen-derived reactive species and their detection was made possible by the advent of sophisticated techniques such as electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy or fluorescent probes. These enabled both the study of free radical biochemistry and the acquisition of useful information about the nature and consequences of free-radical-induced protein and lipid oxidation, both in vitro and in vivo. Heart Metab. 2006;31:5–7.