Rizwan Ahmad

By Rizwan Ahmad and Haseeb Ahsan

Part of the book: Autoimmune Disorders

By Rizwan Ahmad

Part of the book: Free Radicals, Antioxidants and Diseases

By Haseeb Ahsan and Rizwan Ahmad

The simultaneous measurement of different substances from a single sample is an emerging area for achieving efficient and high-throughput detection in several applications. Although immunoanalytical techniques are established and advantageous over alternative screening analytical platforms, one of the challenges for immunoassays is multiplexing. While ELISA is still commonly used to characterise a single analyte, laboratories and organisations are moving towards multiplex immunoassays. The validation of novel biomarkers and their amalgamation into multiplex immunoassays confers the prospects of simultaneous measurement of multiple analytes in a single sample, thereby minimising cost, time and sample. Therefore, the technological advancement in clinical sciences is helpful in the identification of analytes or biomarkers in test samples. However, the analytical bioanalysers are expensive and capable of detecting only a small amount or type of analytes. The simultaneous measurement of different substances from a single sample called multiplexing has become increasingly important for the quantification of pathological or toxicological samples. Although multiplex assays have many advantages over conventional assays, there are also problems that may cause apprehension among clinicians and researchers. Hence, many challenges still remain for these multiplexing systems which are at early stages of development.

Part of the book: Innate Immunity in Health and Disease

By Haseeb Ahsan, Mohammad Yusuf Hasan and Rizwan Ahmad

Free radicals are highly reactive molecules that are unstable and have extremely short-short half-life. They are derived from either oxygen (reactive oxygen species, ROS) or nitrogen (reactive nitrogen species, RNS) in mitochondria, plasma membrane and endoplasmic reticulum due to oxidative stress and damage. ROS/RNS are physiologically useful at low concentrations and are responsible for the activation of redox-sensitive signaling pathways, phagocytosis of infected cells and removal of abnormal and aging cells. The endogenous sources of ROS are the electron transport chain, the respiratory burst of phagocytes and oxidation of lipids. These radicals react with biomolecules such as DNA, proteins and lipids and may cause pathophysiological conditions such as autoimmunity, carcinogenesis, and neurodegenerative diseases. The role of ROS in autoimmune response remains complex and they have been implicated in the initiation, generation and amplification of novel epitopes. ROS also appears to play a critical role in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a systemic autoimmune disease of the joints also known as inflammatory arthritis (IA). ROS are involved in the initiation of various signaling pathways and have a significant role in the pathophysiology of RA.

Part of the book: Reactive Oxygen Species

By Rizwan Ahmad

Part of the book: Reactive Oxygen Species