Journal of Molecular Biomarkers & Diagnosis

Oxidative stress is thought to be a major contributor to a variety of diseases. A plethora of methods for measuring the extent and nature of oxidative stress have been developed and used in virtually all diseases, ranging from DNA oxidation to proteins, lipids and free amino acids. Increased understanding of disease biology and redox biology has resulted in more specific and sensitive tools for measuring oxidative stress markers, which are very diverse and sometimes very low in abundance. The literature is extremely diverse. It is often difficult to draw broad conclusions about the significance of oxidative stress biomarkers because only a small proportion of diseases have used a variety of different biomarkers and different biomarkers have been studied.

Despite concerted efforts over the last two decades to develop new diagnostics, drugs and vaccines, tuberculosis remains a global emergency. Several novel diagnostic technologies, such as nucleic acid-based amplification tests, imaging and volatile organic compound breath analysis, show promise for improved point-of-care rapid tests for tuberculosis. Advances in new and repurposed drugs for use in multidrug-resistant (MDR) or extensively drug-resistant (XDR) tuberculosis have focused on the development of several new drug regimens and their clinical trial evaluation and they now influence World Health Organization guidelines. Since the failure of the MVA85A vaccine two years ago, no new tuberculosis vaccine candidates have entered clinical trials.