Quantitative Evaluation of the Most Indicative Biomarker of Oxidative Stress in Human Disease and Environmental Exposure

The notion that oxidative stress is a part of virtually every disease and environmental exposure has now become ingrained in everyday knowledge. However, the magnitude of this pathway’s importance to the initiation, progression and even the ability to cure pathologies and toxicities is critically debated and largely unknown. Due to a methodological focus on detecting statistically significant changes with little regard to the actual change in biomarker concentration, quantitative comparison between pathologies has never been available. The goal of this study is to evaluate the increases of oxidative stress due to pathologies and exposures on a quantitative level using published studies with F2-isoprostanes as the oxidative stress biomarker. Cohen’s d value was determined to quantify the magnitude of change between control and affected populations. In total, 378 different study populations from 168 distinct publications totaling 24,045 individuals were included in this analysis. Of this total population, a little over half (13,473) of the analyzed individuals where considered control. Numerous pathologies report a statistically significant difference in F2-isoprostane concentrations between their measured affected and control populations. But after further calculation, the size of the observed effect was small (d = In conclusion, after evaluating published studies, we have determined the quantitative difference in the magnitude of oxidative stress in different human pathologies. The calculated effect sizes should convey the true involvement of oxidative stress in the toxicity of environmental exposure and disease.