title: Oxidative stress and neurodegenerative disorders.
abstract: Living cells continually generate reactive oxygen species (ROS) through the respiratory chain during energetic metabolism. ROS at low or moderate concentration can play important physiological roles. However, an excessive amount of ROS under oxidative stress would be extremely deleterious. The central nervous system (CNS) is particularly vulnerable to oxidative stress due to its high oxygen consumption, weakly antioxidative systems and the terminal-differentiation characteristic of neurons. Thus, oxidative stress elicits various neurodegenerative diseases. In addition, chemotherapy could result in severe side effects on the CNS and peripheral nervous system (PNS) of cancer patients, and a growing body of evidence demonstrates the involvement of ROS in drug-induced neurotoxicities as well. Therefore, development of antioxidants as neuroprotective drugs is a potentially beneficial strategy for clinical therapy. In this review, we summarize the source, balance maintenance and physiologic functions of ROS, oxidative stress and its toxic mechanisms underlying a number of neurodegenerative diseases, and the possible involvement of ROS in chemotherapy-induced toxicity to the CNS and PNS. We ultimately assess the value for antioxidants as neuroprotective drugs and provide our comments on the unmet needs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Geratology, First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin 130021, China. zjiang@panaceapharma.com.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: College of Pharmacology, Inner Mongolia University for the Nationalities, Tongliao, Inner Mongolia 028000, China
authors.forename: Wuliji
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: O
authors.affiliation: Cancer Center, First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, Jilin 130021, China
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Panacea Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Gaithersburg, MD 20877, USA
authors.forename: Zhi-Gang
authors.initials: ZG
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: Panacea Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Gaithersburg, MD 20877, USA
authors.forename: Hossein A
authors.initials: HA
authors.lastname: Ghanbari
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000975:Antioxidants / Q000378:metabolism / Q000627:therapeutic use; D017209:Apoptosis; D059865:Endoplasmic Reticulum Stress; D006801:Humans; D019636:Neurodegenerative Diseases / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000473:pathology; D018384:Oxidative Stress; D010088:Oxidoreductases / Q000378:metabolism; D017382:Reactive Oxygen Species / Q000378:metabolism; D056811:Unfolded Protein Response
chemical_list: D000975:Antioxidants; D017382:Reactive Oxygen Species; D010088:Oxidoreductases