Nutritional Antioxidants and Disease Prevention: Mechanisms of Action

It has been known for 50 years or longer that much disease is caused by reactive oxygen species (ROS). At an international meeting of the World Health Organization in the mid-1960s, the distinguished Russian toxicologist, Professor Sanojki, presented a major treatise on the ‘rusting diseases’, a phrase not understood by many American and European delegates, but intended to mean diseases attributed to oxygen toxicity, such as rheumatoid arthritis. Since that time it has been increasingly realized that because of the ubiquitous biological toxicity of ROS, the similarity of ROS-induced pathology to that of many spontaneous diseases, and the relative ease with which ROS are produced, particularly by bacteria and other invasive organisms, much disease, from malignancy to cardiovascular disease and dementia, is associated with ROS. Indeeed, ROS are also responsible for ageing and death, and were it not for the existence of a highly effective biological system for antioxidant defence, life as we know it could not exist.