FREE RADICALS AND DIABETES MELLITUS

Oxidative stress or free radicals has been found in many studies to participate in progression of diabetes mellitus which plays an important role during diabetes, including impairment of insulin action and increase in complicated incidence. This review was based on the detection of roles of free radicals in the progression of diabetes mellitus thru using different sites like PubMed, Medline, Scopus etc. Endothelial cells also contain high amounts of aldo-keto reductase, and are thus prone to increased polyol pathway activation. Moreover, a large body of evidence supports hypothesis that hyperglycaemia or diabetes leads to vascular diacylglycerol accumulation and subsequent PKC activation, causing a variety of cardiovascular defects. Increase in the levels of oxygen and nitrogen free radicals (ROS/RNS) has been linked with lipid peroxidation, non-enzymatic glycation of proteins and oxidation of glucose which contributes toward diabetes mellitus and its complications. Most of the studies have shown relationship between oxidative stress and diabetes along with their complications related to heart, liver kidney and eye. Thus, oxidative stress seems to be more worrying in metabolic disorders specially NIDDM. It concludes that metabolic oxidation is the strongest factor behind insulin dependent and non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus.