Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Respirol. Mar 28, 2017; 7(1): 17-28
Published online Mar 28, 2017. doi: 10.5320/wjr.v7.i1.17
Advance of antioxidants in asthma treatment
Lin-Yun Zhu, Zhen-Hua Ni, Xu-Ming Luo, Xiong-Biao Wang
Lin-Yun Zhu, Zhen-Hua Ni, Xu-Ming Luo, Xiong-Biao Wang, Department of Respiratory Medicine, Putuo Hospital, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai 200062, China
Author contributions: Zhu LY wrote the manuscript majority; Ni ZH and Luo XM were involved in editing the manuscript; Wang XB sponsored and wrote the manuscript.
Supported by The National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81402988.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None of the authors has any potential financial conflict of interest related to this manuscript.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Xiong-Biao Wang, Professor, Department of Respiratory Medicine, Putuo Hospital, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, No.164, LanXi Road, Shanghai 200062, China. xiongbiao6@yahoo.com
Telephone: +86-21-22233222
Received: September 2, 2016
Peer-review started: September 6, 2016
First decision: November 10, 2016
Revised: November 23, 2016
Accepted: January 11, 2017
Article in press: January 14, 2017
Published online: March 28, 2017
Abstract

Asthma is an allergic disease, characterized as a recurrent airflow limitation, airway hyperreactivity, and chronic inflammation, involving a variety of cells and cytokines. Reactive oxygen species have been proven to play an important role in asthma. The pathogenesis of oxidative stress in asthma involves an imbalance between oxidant and antioxidant systems that is caused by environment pollutants or endogenous reactive oxygen species from inflammation cells. There is growing evidence that antioxidant treatments that include vitamins and food supplements have been shown to ameliorate this oxidative stress while improving the symptoms and decreasing the severity of asthma. In this review, we summarize recent studies that are related to the mechanisms and biomarkers of oxidative stress, antioxidant treatments in asthma.

Keywords: Asthma, Oxidative stress, Reactive oxygen species, Antioxidants

Core tip: Oxidative stress plays an important role in the pathogenesis of asthma. The imbalance of oxidative and anti-oxidative system is caused by exogenous and endogenous reactive oxygen species. Some elevated substances could be served as oxidative or antioxidative biomarkers. Different kinds of treatments showed antioxidative role, including diet, vitamins and food supplements; natural extracts; magnetic field and laser, etc. However, no antioxidants were applied in first-line therapy of asthma now. More works are needed, especially clinical trial, to clarify the clinical value of antioxidant therapy.