Currently, there are major advances in the field of oxidative stress and whether or not it has a role in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease. However, much of this knowledge and discussions of oxidative stress have centred on specific issues connected with cardiovascular disease areas such that no clear comprehensive review has been documented or published until this book.

This collection of research studies on oxidative stress underline the "emerging concept" that nitric oxide and related compounds are instrumental in these reactions, especially when applied to blood flow regulation, pathological hypoxia and physiological cell signaling processes. Nova staff editors Matata and Elahi have assembled a wide range of scientific data from contributors all over the world in order to inform biochemistry students and other researchers in the field of these latest findings.

There is an emerging concept that nitric oxide (NO), its derivatives and reactive oxygen intermediates (ROS) are the major determinants of the involvement of oxidant stress that contributes to the control of physiological cell signalling processes, blood flow regulation and pathological hypoxia. There is recent published evidence for additional functions of these oxygen metabolites in cardiac gene expression; functions that include the modulation of the cytokine response of lymphocytes and the regulation of immune cell apoptosis as well as immuno-deviating effects. In vitro and in vivo experimental models investigating the biological nature of ROS have shown that there is a concentration dependent effect of NO and that differences in cell sensitivity to NO may have an impact upon the degree of immune or inflammatory state. Disturbances in NO bio-availability leads to loss of cardioprotective actions within biological systems and in some cases may even increase oxidative stress and disease progression. Hence, considerable interest in identifying the mechanisms involved in their generation and implications have spurted in the hope that inhibition strategies can be developed either bio-materially or pharmacologically. This book brings together the emerging biological concepts of oxidative stress and its connotation in the pathogenesis of various inflammatory processes in biological systems.