ABSTRACT
Due to a rapidly growing body of scientific evidence, the concept that production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and sustained elevation in levels of intracellular calcium are major components in various types of neuropathological events has gained wide acceptance in the past several years. Not only do aberrant increases in levels of these compounds appear to damage neurons but they also appear to interact with one another to bring about and accentuate their respective harmful effects. In this chapter we give a brief review of data suggesting a correlation between these two phenomena both in a well-characterized example of acute neuronal damage, i.e., ischemia/stroke, and in slow neuronal cell death associated with various neurodegenerative diseases.
