Sung Soo Kim

By Tae Gyu Choi and Sung Soo Kim

Mitochondria are the major energy producers within a cell in the form of adenosine triphosphate by oxidative phosphorylation. Normal mitochondrial metabolism inevitably generates reactive oxygen species (ROS), which have been considered to solely cause cellular damage. Increase of oxidative stress has been linked to various pathologies. Thus, mitochondrial ROS (mROS) were basically proposed as byproducts of oxidative metabolism, which undergo normalized by antioxidant enzymes. However, the mROS have extensively been esteemed to function as signalling molecules to regulate a wide variety of physiology. These phenomena are indeed dependent on mitochondrial redox status, which is dynamically altered under different physiological and pathological conditions. The oxidative stress is incurred by which the redox status is inclined to exceeded oxidation or reduction. Here, we attempt to integrate the recent advances in our understanding of the physiological functions of mROS.

Part of the book: Free Radical Medicine and Biology

By Salima Akter, Mohammad Nazmul Hasan, Begum Rokeya, Hajara Akhter, Mohammad Shamim Gazi, Farah Sabrin and Sung Soo Kim

Alternative medicine has renewed its growing public interest in recent times due to inequality of patients and healthcare professionals’ ratios with increased workload for the latter, various side effects of modern medicine, lack of complete remission from chronic diseases, high cost of new drugs, and emerging new diseases. Hence, people have become more dependent on treatment systems replying on alternative medicine or herbal medicine from traditional medicinal practitioners. Alternative medicine has grown substantially over time and encompasses several millennia of therapeutic systems. The significant areas of alternative medicine include mind–body therapies, body manipulation, and the therapies based on biological systems. Natural products based biological treatment is the most popular of them as nature has endowed us with abundance of effective pharmacologically active phytochemicals. These phytochemicals possess numerous specific clinical health benefits including antioxidant, antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, anti-infectious and analgesic effects. In addition, alternative medicine is easily accessible, affordable, most often noninvasive, and provides favorable benefits during terminal periods of some diseases. However, due to the lack of well-designed clinical trials, the safety and effectiveness of many alternative medicines/therapies remains elusive. This chapter will critically discuss major areas, uses, safety and regulation, current challenges & future perspectives of alternative medicine.

Part of the book: Alternative Medicine

By Dongjin Yeo, Tae Gyu Choi and Sung Soo Kim

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), ranked as the seventh leading cause of death worldwide, is one of the most incidental neurodegenerative disorders. AD patients experience irreparable damages to the brain, indicated as progressive, insidious, and degenerative. Past research has discovered that the amyloid cascade hypothesis best describes the pathophysiological etiology of AD, designating amyloid-β plaques and neurofibrillary tangles as the ‘hallmarks’ of AD pathology. Furthermore, accumulating evidence show that the oxidative stress state, the imbalance between reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and antioxidation, contributes to AD development. This chapter describes the oxidative stress process in AD. It mainly tackles the correlation of metal-catalyzed ROS production with amyloid-β and how it oxidatively damages both the amyloid-β itself and the surrounding molecules, potentially leading to AD. Additionally, both the role of metal chelation therapy as a treatment for AD and its challenges will be mentioned as well. This chapter specially focuses on how metal ions imbalance induces oxidative stress and how it affects AD pathology.

Part of the book: Reactive Oxygen Species