Recent advances and long-standing problems in detecting oxidative damage and reactive oxygen species in skeletal muscle.

An increasingly sophisticated array of approaches are now available for the study of the activities of reactive oxygen species and oxidative modifications in skeletal muscle, but the most up-to-date techniques are not readily available to many researchers in this field due to their requirement for sophisticated mass spectrometry, imaging or other high cost technologies. Most papers published therefore rely on a number of established approaches although the choice of approach is also clearly dependent upon the experimental model and access to skeletal muscle that is available to the investigator, how much detail is required and the overall question to be addressed. Numerous reports have described the problems associated with some of the popular approaches that are widely followed, including measurement of thiobarbituric acid substances and the sole use of fluorescence-based probes such as dichlorodihydrofluorescein. This brief review reports the areas in which methods are improving to allow valid assessments to made in this area and indicates some of the more recent developments that provide alternative ways to assess the activity of individual species and endpoints in the various experimental models that may be examined.