Antioxidant therapy effectiveness: an up to date.

Antioxidants are chemical compounds that giving an electron to free radical molecules convert them to an harmless configuration, avoiding damaging chain reaction, which can involve lipids, proteins enzymes carbohydrates, DNA, cell and nuclear membranes up to the cell death. Being either exogenous or endogenous they are addressed to prevent the oxidation induced damage, a process that causes damage in all tissues through free radicals chemical reactivity. A lot of natural, nutraceutical or chemical compounds are being actually marketed with a lot of different claims and are prescribed by doctors or sold over the counter. Unfortunately, in the medical literature many heterogeneous published articles support the use of this class of drugs, but most of them cannot be compared or pooled to achieve statistical significance of effectiveness. Our review aims at defining the state of the art of antioxidant therapy, with specific reference on the evidence based clinical use.