Acute renal failure (ARF) affects as many as 5% of all hospitalised patients and has a high rate of mortality. To date, clinical treatment of patients suffering from ARF is still largely supportive and dialysis remains the only viable therapy. Therefore, the development of novel interventions...

Asthma is considered the most common chronic respiratory condition with a mortality increase of 31% in the last 7 years. Recent evidence implicates oxygen-derived free radicals as important mediators of inflammation in asthma. Although, the human lung has an effective, well-integrated...

Is a common event in human pathophysiology. Ischemia occurs when blood flow has slowed, or stopped, and cannot meet the metabolic demands of the tissues. This happens, for example, in the event of stroke or heart attack. It also happens in the more predictable settings of surgery, such as...

Interruption of blood flow to the liver is an unavoidable consequence of liver transplantation and resectional surgery. A growing body of experimental evidence suggests that reperfusion of the ischemic liver initiates hepatocellular injury and inflammation culminating in severe liver injury...

Interleukin-2 (IL-2) is currently used to treat patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma and malignant melanoma. Clinical use of IL-2 is limited by severe side effects, particularly hypotension. Because of such dose-limiting side effects, the full period of IL-2 dosing is frequently...

A vast number of experimental and clinical studies implicates oxygen-derived free radi cals (especially, superoxide and hydroxyl radical) and high energy oxidants (such as peroxynitrite) as mediators of acute and chronic inflammation. Superoxide anion can modulate a wide range of toxic...

Superoxide dismutase (SOD) is a group of enzymes, which is often regarded as the first line of cellular defense against the deleterious effects of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Oxidative stress that results from the production and reactivity of ROS has emerged as a main pathogenic event in...

This chapter will largely focus on reactive oxygen species (ROS) in certain testicular pathologies. The involvement of ROS in the cytotoxicity of spermatozoa has been known for decades; however, recent studies have also linked ROS to various pathologies of the testis including, cryptorchidism,...

The generation of superoxide is an unavoidable consequence of aerobic metabolism and all aerobes require methods to detoxify it for survival. The superoxide dismutase (SOD) enzymes are the most common way aerobes detoxify superoxide. In humans, a number of pathologies involve the...

The list of patho-physiological conditions associated with the over-production of super oxide anion expands every day. The most exciting realization is that there appears to be a commonality to the tissue injury observed in various disease states; and that superoxide anion, produces tissue...