Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book and its counterpart, Active Oxygen in Biochemistry, explore the active research area of the chemistry and biochemistry of oxygen. Complementary but independent, the two volumes integrate subject areas including medicine, biology, chemistry, engineering, and environmental studies.

This is the first book to integrate the biological, nutritional, and health aspects of antioxidant status. Fifty contributors integrate and transfer the knowledge of free radicals and antioxidants from the test tube to the laboratory of the biologist, clinical nutritionist, and medical researcher, as well as to the office of the dietician, nutritionist, and physician. Topics examined include factors affecting and methods for evaluating antioxidant status in humans; effect of diet and physiological stage (infancy, aging, exercise, alcoholism, HIV infection, etc.) on antioxidant status; and the role of antioxidant status in nutrition, health, and disease.

Covers the vastly expanding subject of oxidative processes mediated by copper ions within biological systems Copper-mediated biological oxidations offer a broad range of fundamentally important and potentially practical chemical processes that cross many chemical and pharmaceutical disciplines. This newest volume in the Wiley Series on Reactive Intermediates in Chemistry and Biology is divided into three logical areas within the topic of copper/oxygen chemistry— biological systems, theory, and bioinorganic models and applications—to explore the biosphere for its highly evolved and thus efficient oxidative transformations in the discovery of new types of interactions between molecular oxygen and copper ion. Featuring a diverse collection of subject matter unified in one complete and comprehensive resource, Copper-Oxygen Chemistry probes the fundamental aspects of copper coordination chemistry, synthetic organic chemistry, and biological chemistry to reveal both the biological and chemical aspects driving the current exciting research efforts behind copper-oxygen chemistry. In addition, Copper-Oxygen Chemistry: Addresses the significantly increasing literature on oxygen-atom insertion and carbon-carbon bond-forming reactions as well as enantioselective oxidation chemistries Progresses from biological systems to spectroscopy and theory, and onward to bioinorganic models and applications Covers a wide array of reaction types such as insertion and dehydrogenation reactions that utilize the cheap, abundant, and energy-containing O2 molecule With thorough coverage by prominent authors and researchers shaping innovations in this growing field, this valuable reference is essential reading for bioinorganic chemists, as well as organic, synthetic, and pharmaceutical chemists in academia and industry.

This presentation describes various aspects of the regulation of tissue oxygenation, including the roles of the circulatory system, respiratory system, and blood, the carrier of oxygen within these components of the cardiorespiratory system. The respiratory system takes oxygen from the atmosphere and transports it by diffusion from the air in the alveoli to the blood flowing through the pulmonary capillaries. The cardiovascular system then moves the oxygenated blood from the heart to the microcirculation of the various organs by convection, where oxygen is released from hemoglobin in the red blood cells and moves to the parenchymal cells of each tissue by diffusion. Oxygen that has diffused into cells is then utilized in the mitochondria to produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the energy currency of all cells. The mitochondria are able to produce ATP until the oxygen tension or PO2 on the cell surface falls to a critical level of about 4–5 mm Hg. Thus, in order to meet the energetic needs of cells, it is important to maintain a continuous supply of oxygen to the mitochondria at or above the critical PO2 . In order to accomplish this desired outcome, the cardiorespiratory system, including the blood, must be capable of regulation to ensure survival of all tissues under a wide range of circumstances. The purpose of this presentation is to provide basic information about the operation and regulation of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, as well as the properties of the blood and parenchymal cells, so that a fundamental understanding of the regulation of tissue oxygenation is achieved.

When I was about fifteen, my Biological Seiences teacher, Prof. N. Benacchio, lent me a book by Paul de Kruif "The Microbe Hunters" and I remained fascinated by infectious diseases. I was intrigued by the potency of virulent bacteria which are constantly trying to invade our bodies and often overcome what today we call innate and adoptive immunity. Indeed, shortly after that, I was struck by his tragic death due to peritonitis. Later, while studying medicine (although medical knowledge in the 1950s was almost primordial compared with today), I soon realised how the various biological systems were wonderfully organised but at the same time frail and how our life could end in a few minutes. Slowly it became obvious that our "wellness" was the result of a dynamic and very unstable equilibrium between health and disease. This unstable equilibrium could be broken forever if the body's response could not reverse the pathological state. I stuck a sort ofposter on the wall ofmy room with these three words and connecting arrows: HEALTH~-? DISEASE -? DEATH As I don't believe in another world after death, it became obvious to me that we should make every possible effort not only to delay death, but to try always to shift the equilibrium to the left. In this book, I will try to show that this can be achieved, as a last resort, even with ozonetherapy.