Oxidative DNA damage is important in aging and the degenerative diseases of aging such as cancer. Estimates commonly rely on measurements of 8-oxo-2-deoxyguanosine (oxo 8 dG), an adduct that occurs in DNA and is also excreted in urine after DNA repair. Here we examine difficulties inherent in the analysis of oxo 8 dG, identify sources of artifacts, and provide solutions to some of the common methodological problems. A frequent criticism has been that phenol in DNA extraction solutions artificially increases the measured level of oxo 8 dG. We found that phenol extraction of DNA contributes a real but minor increase in the level of oxo 8 dG when compared, under equivalent conditions, with a successful nonphenol method. A more significant reduction in the baseline level was achieved with a modification of the recently introduced chaotropic NaI method, reducing our estimate of the level of steady-state oxidative adducts by an order of magnitude to 24,000 adducts per cell in young rats and 66,000 adducts per cell in old rats. Of several alternative methods tested, the use of this chaotropic technique of DNA isolation by using NaI produced the lowest and least variable oxo 8 dG values. In further studies we show that human urinary 8-oxo-guanine (oxo 8 Gua) excretion is not affected by the administration of allopurinol, suggesting that, unlike some methylated adducts, oxo 8 Gua is not derived enzymatically from xanthine oxidase. Lastly, we discuss remaining uncertainties inherent both in steady-state oxo 8 dG measurements and in estimates of endogenous oxidation (''hit rates'') based on urinary excretion of oxo 8 dG and oxo 8 Gua.

The responses to oxidative stress induced by chronic exercise (8-wk treadmill running) or acute exercise (treadmill running to exhaustion) were investigated in the brain, liver, heart, kidney, and muscles of rats. Various biomarkers of oxidative stress were measured, namely, lipid peroxidation [malondialdehyde (MDA)], protein oxidation (protein carbonyl levels and glutamine synthetase activity), oxidative DNA damage (8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine), and endogenous antioxidants (ascorbic acid, alpha-tocopherol, glutathione, ubiquinone, ubiquinol, and cysteine). The predominant changes are in MDA, ascorbic acid, glutathione, cysteine, and cystine. The mitochondrial fraction of brain and liver showed oxidative changes as assayed by MDA similar to those of the tissue homogenate. Our results show that the responses of the brain to oxidative stress by acute or chronic exercise are quite different from those in the liver, heart, fast muscle, and slow muscle; oxidative stress by acute or chronic exercise elicits different responses depending on the organ tissue type and its endogenous antioxidant levels.

Immobilization stress of male Sprague-Dawley rats induces oxidative damage to lipid, protein, and DNA in the brain. Significant increases in lipid peroxidation were found in the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, hippocampus, and midbrain compared to the unstressed controls. Significant increases in levels of protein oxidation were also found in the cortex, hypothalamus, striatum, and medulla oblongata. Oxidative nuclear DNA damage increased after stress in all brain regions, although only the cerebral cortex showed a significant increase. Depletion of glutathione showed some stimulation to oxidative damage in the unstressed control and stressed animals. Further studies of the mitochondrial and cytosol fractions of cerebral cortex demonstrated that mitochondria showed a significantly greater increase in lipid peroxidation and protein oxidation than cytosol. Data from plasma and liver showed oxidative damage similar to that of the brain. These findings provide evidence to support the idea that stress produces oxidants, and that the oxidative damage in stress could contribute to the degenerative diseases of aging, including brain dysfunction.

Many decisions in drug development and medical practice are based on measuring blood concentrations of endogenous and exogenous molecules. Yet most biochemical and pharmacological events take place in the tissues. Also, most drugs with few notable exceptions exert their effects not within the bloodstream, but in defined target tissues into which drugs have to distribute from the central compartment. Assessing tissue drug chemistry has, thus, for long been viewed as a more rational way to provide clinically meaningful data rather than gaining information from blood samples. More specifically, it is often the extracellular (interstitial) tissue space that is most closely related to the site of action (biophase) of the drug. Currently microdialysis (microD) is the only tool available that explicitly provides data on the extracellular space. Although microD as a preclinical and clinical tool has been available for two decades, there is still uncertainty about the use of microD in drug research and development, both from a methodological and a regulatory point of view. In an attempt to reduce this uncertainty and to provide an overview of the principles and applications of microD in preclinical and clinical settings, an AAPS-FDA workshop took place in November 2005 in Nashville, TN, USA. Stakeholders from academia, industry and regulatory agencies presented their views on microD as a tool in drug research and development.

ABSTRACT:The objective of the present study was to examine the accuracy of using unbound brain concentration determined by a brain homogenate method (C ub ), cerebral spinal fluid concentration (C CSF ), and unbound plasma concentration (C up ) as a surrogate for brain interstitial fluid concentration determined by brain microdialysis (C m ). Nine compounds-carbamazepine, citalopram, ganciclovir, metoclopramide, N-desmethylclozapine, quinidine, risperidone, 9-hydroxyrisperidone, and thiopental-were selected, and each was administered as an intravenous bolus (up to 5 mg/kg) followed by a constant intravenous infusion (1-9 mg/kg/h) for 6 h in rats. For eight of the nine compounds, the C ub s were within 3-fold of their C m ; thiopental had a C m 4-fold of its C ub . The C CSF s of eight of the nine compounds were within 3-fold of their corresponding C m ; 9-hydroxyrisperidone showed a C CSF 5-fold of its C m . The C up s of five of the nine compounds were within 3-fold of their C m ; four compounds (ganciclovir, metoclopramide, quinidine, and 9-hydroxyrisperidone) had C up s 6-to 14-fold of their C m . In conclusion, the C ub and C CSF were within 3-fold of the C m for the majority of the compounds tested. The C up s were within 3-fold of C m for lipophilic non-P-glycoprotein (؊P-gp) substrates and greater than 3-fold of C m for hydrophilic or P-gp substrates. The present study indicates that the brain homogenate and cerebral spinal fluid methods may be used as surrogate methods to predict brain interstitial fluid concentrations within 3-fold of error in drug discovery and development settings.For drugs with an intended action in the central nervous system it is assumed that unbound drug in brain interstitial fluid is in direct contact or in equilibrium with the site of action (de Lange and Danhof, 2002). Therefore, in preclinical and clinical pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic studies, it is critical to determine the concentration in the interstitial fluid for brain-targeted compounds. Unbound plasma concentration (C up ) has been used to represent the unbound concentration in tissue (Wilkinson, 2001). Because the brain is separated from the plasma by the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and the blood cerebrospinal fluid barrier (BCSFB), C up may not represent the interstitial fluid concentration (Davson and Segal, 1995;Hammarlund-Udenaes et al., 2008;Liu et al., 2008).Microdialysis has been considered as a standard approach to measure interstitial fluid concentration (C m ) (Joukhadar and Müller, 2005;Chaurasia et al., 2007). Although this technique has been developed for more than 2 decades, it is primarily used for determination of neurotransmitters and not drug concentrations in the brain. The main limitations of this technique include high resource requirements, low throughput, and special surgical skills to set up the experiment. In addition, many compounds in the discovery stage are often very lipophilic, and it is difficult to apply microdialysis technique to study these compounds because of high nonspecific bindi...

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