Rapid on-site dual optical system to measure specific reactive oxygen species

Oxidative stress has been implicated in various disorders and controlling it would be important for healthy life. We have developed a new optical system for easily and accurately measuring oxidative stress in whole blood. It is optimized for simultaneously detecting reactive oxygen species (ROS) and highly reactive ROS (hROS), elicited mostly by white blood cells in a few microliters of blood. Results obtained by using this system show at least four important findings. 1) chemiluminescence of MCLA was confirmed to be attributable to O.sub.2 .sup.-* . 2) PMA-stimulated cells released O.sub.2 .sup.-* longer and more slowly than fMLP-stimulated ones. 3) fluorescence produced by APF oxidation was confirmed to be attributable to hROS, mostly OCl.sup.-, produced by myeloperoxidase. 4) the generation of OCl.sup.- was found to be a slower process than the O.sub.2 .sup.-* generation. We also conducted pilot studies of oxidative stress in healthy volunteers.