Clinical oxidation parameters of aging

Abstract

Aging is a complex progressive physiological alteration of the organism which ultimately leads to death. During the whole life a human being is confronted with oxidative stress. To measure how this oxidative stress is developing during the aging process and how it changes the cellular metabolism several substances have been pronounced as biomarkers including lipid peroxidation (LPO) products, protein oxidation products, antioxidative acting enzymes, minerals, vitamins, glutathione, flavonoids, bilirubin and uric acid (UA). But none of them could develop to the leading one which is accepted by the whole scientific community to determine the life expectancy of the individual person or biological age or age-related health status. Further there are many conflicting data about the changes of each single biomarker during the aging process. There are so many different influences acting on the concentration or activity of single substances or single enzymes that it is not possible to measure only one clinical marker and determine how healthy an individual is or to predict the life expectancy of the corresponding person. Therefore, always a set or pattern of clinical biomarkers should be used to determine the oxidation status of the person. This set should include at least one marker for the LPO, the protein oxidation and the total antioxidative status and ideally also one for DNA damages.