ИСТИНА

Oxidative stress (OS) is a disbalance between free radical level and antioxidant defence in living bodies. A large body of evidence has been accumulated about the role of OS in development of a variety of human diseases. Although the free radical damage of cells and tissues occurs in different regions of our body and is directed to specific cells in each particular case of pathology, the level of free radicals and antioxidants in the blood follows or precede free radical formation in specific locations, due to the fact that the blood circulates anywhere and its components are in equilibrium with all cells in the organism, not only in respect to oxygen or nutrients, but also in respect to antioxidants, reactive species and mediators that determine OS level. Free radicals are extremely reactive and have very short lifetime. They cannot be determined by routine chemical methods like chromatography, mass spectrometry, NMR etc. Chemiluminescence is a unique method to determine the rate of free radical reactions in chemical and biochemical systems. The essence of the kinetic chemiluminescence approach is the comparison of the chemiluminescence kinetic curves with those calculated on the basis of proposed reaction scheme, with reaction rate constants adjusted manually of automatically. A data obtained in our laboratory in studies of the reactions of free radicals' formation and their scavenging by antioxidants are considered, along with the instruments and computer programs developed for this purpose.