[Evolution and free radicals. Importance of oxidative stress in human pathology]

The evolution and development of currently known organisms, comprised their change and adaptation from the reducing atmosphere to an oxidizing one. The adaptive changes show that some processes were developed to take advantage of the oxidizing atmosphere efficiently. The most important adaptive change was the efficiency in the energy production of aerobic organisms. Some toxic wastes of this process, known as reactive oxygen species, have deleterious functions when modifying and damaging structural and metabolic components of the cells. For this reason, in a parallel way, the processes of evolutionary adaptation included the formation of antioxidant compounds to protect cells from oxidative damage. Nevertheless, under certain circumstances these reactive oxygen species can have paradoxical functions such as the induction of proliferation and cellular death, which occurs in cancer and apoptosis.