New method can measure toxic damage to body

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center have developed the first biochemical yardstick to measure the amount of damage in the body caused by toxic substances found in cigarette smoke, alcohol and pollution. The public has always been aware that vitamins aid the body in combating the harmful effects of toxic substances known as free radicals. However, these conclusions have been based largely on statistics and tests performed on cells in petri dishes. The newly developed method measures the biochemical produced by a free radical attack on the fatty acid found throughout the body. By comparing the amount of free radicals before and after a dose of vitamins, researchers should be able to measure the extent in which the vitamins neutralized the toxic substances. "What this represents is a noninvasive, quantitative marker of a process that has been implicated in the origin of a wide repertoire of diseases, including cancer and heart disease," said Garret FitzGerald chairman of the department of pharmacology and a professor of cardiovascular medicine. "For the first time, we can develop a rational basis for attributing a role for free radicals in those diseases, for establishing antioxidant doses of vitamins or drugs, and, therefore, for testing those doses in relevant diseases." This new finding could lead to more accurate tests on the efficacy of vitamins and other similar compounds in preventing or treating the damage caused by free radicals. "Our problem, up to now, has been that we have had very little information at all as to what might be an appropriate antioxidant dose or dosing interval of any particular vitamin or drug," FitzGerald said in a statement released by News and Public Affairs. "This has led to a certain amount of confusion among members of the public and in the medical literature. "And the attraction of this test is that it's a specific, chemically stable marker of antioxidant activity that can be measured with great accuracy." People with inadequate natural defenses against free radicals could also benefit from this research. By determining the appropriate vitamin or drug dosage, disabling and life-threatening diseases that arise later in life could be avoided. "The imbalance between the generation of reactive free radicals and the body's antioxidant defenses is detectable by this approach in people who don't have any overt disease -- in this case smokers," FitzGerald added. "The same may be true as far as alcohol consumption and other risk factors are concerned, which raises the possibility that this test may give us a handle on the role of free radicals in the evolution of disease before it is clinically manifest." In the study, FitzGerald and his colleagues discovered that nicotine patches, vitamin C, and the combination of vitamins C and E lowered the measurements of the biochemical marker. Aspirin and vitamin E alone had no effect, although additional dosing with vitamin E did produce an effect in subsequent studies.