Pamplona R, Naudí A, Gavín R et al.
Universitat de Lleida, Lleida, Spain.
Free Radic Biol Med 2008;45:1159–66.
Editor’s note: Free radical abnormalities, or oxidative stress, occur in so many different types of disease that one can think of them as part of the reaction of cells to damage. The current article provides direct evidence that oxidative stress also occurs in prion diseases, both in humans and in experimental animals. The investigators used spectrometry-based techniques to measure specific products of free radical damage to macromolecules in the brains of six patients with Creutzfeldt–Jacob disease, and in Syrian hamsters affected by scrapie. A number of free radical products were discovered at higher levels in both populations when compared with healthy controls, and the infectious prion protein isoform was also shown to be subject to oxidative modification.