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Oxidative stress is implicated in a large nuber of diseases including neurodegenerative diseases and autoimmune diseases.
Indicators of oxidative stress have been detected in muscles and blood from CFS patients. The cognitive symptoms observed in patients, could be triggered by the alteration of the blood-brain barrier’s permeability. This alteration is due to oxidative damage to cellular membranes. Increased oxidative stress in CFS patients may have several origins as chronic inflammation, excess nitric oxide production or exposuure to environmental toxins.
Oxidative stress markers are helpful to evaluate the need for antioxidant therapy.
Useful tests to that effect are:
Total antioxidant capacity
Fatty acids oxidation
Total antioxidant capacity
Antioxidant systems in the body normally lilmit the extent of oxidative damage. However, a number of factors can severly affect their function.
There are many types of antioxidant systems. Although measurments of single antioxidants may be needed in some cases, the best index in oxidative stress studies is to measure the total antioxidant capacity of a sample. That measurement will show the overall effect of antioxidants working together.
Fatty acids oxidation
Lipid peroxidation is a well-defined mechanism of cellular damage. Lipid peroxides decompose to form compounds such as malondialdehyde (MDA) and 4-hydroxynonenal (4-HNE), natural end-products of lipid peroxidation.
Measuring these end-products is ons of the most widely accepted assays for determination of oxidative damage. The capacity of MDA to interact with tiobarbituric acid (TBA) is used to quantify MDA in a serum sample. This forms a MDA-TBA adduct that can be quantified spectrophotometrically.
