ABSTRACT
Every day, we are subjected to the health risks associated with oxidative damage caused by reactive oxygen species. These reactive oxygen species are derived from all aspects of human endeavors, from automobile exhaust fumes, industrial plants, waste incinerations, and cigarette smoking, to indirect environment consequences, such as UV-light exposure through a depleted ozone layer. Oxidation of various biological substances contributes to many diseases, including AIDS (Sepulveda and Watson 2002), Alzheimer’s disease (Moreira et al. 2005), atherosclerosis (Heinecke 1997), cancer (Paz-Elizur et al. 2008), cataracts (Selvi et al. 2011), diabetes (Albright et al. 2004; Itoh et al. 2009), inammation (Halliwell and Gutteridge 1995), liver disease (Preedy et al. 1998), and Parkinson’s disease (Beal 2003; Chaturvedi and Beal 2008), as well as aging (Liu and Mori 2006). Therefore, use of antioxidant supplements has begun to receive much attention as they are substances that might help to prevent these diseases.
