Review of oxidative stress in relevance to uremia

Customary risk factors such as hypercholesterolemia, hypertension cannot explain the high cardio vascular morbidity and mortality seen in CKD patients. This has resulted in identifying nontraditional risk factors commonly seen in uremia such as chronic inflammation and oxidative stress. Oxidative stress appears to mediate the effect of inflammation in causing endothelial injury which results in multiple pathological and clinical effects. There are multiple oxidative makers in vivo but they are difficult to assess. Many anti-oxidant therapies including dialysis membrane-coated vitamin E has been tried to reduce oxidative stress in CKD and dialysis patients.