Hyperglycemia and Oxidative Stress: An Integral, Updated and Critical Overview of Their Metabolic Interconnections

This review focuses on the multiple and reciprocal relationships that exist between oxidative stress, hyperglycemia and diabetes and related metabolic disorders. Human metabolism uses most of the consumed glucose under aerobic conditions. Oxygen is needed in the mitochondria to obtain energy, as well as for the action of microsomal oxidases and cytosolic pro-oxidant enzymes. This relentlessly generates a certain amount of reactive oxygen species (ROS). Although ROS are intracellular signals necessary for some physiological processes, their accumulation leads to oxidative stress, hyperglycemia, and progressive resistance to insulin. A cellular pro-oxidant versus an antioxidant equilibrium would regulate ROS…