Aberrations in Oxidative Stress Markers in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Oxidative stress has been reported to be involved in the onset and development of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Data from clinical studies have highlighted increased peripheral blood oxidative stress markers in patients with ALS, but results are inconsistent. Therefore, we quantitatively pooled data on levels of blood oxidative stress markers in ALS patients from the literature using a meta-analytic technique. A systematic search was performed on PubMed and Web of Science, and we included studies analyzing blood oxidative stress marker levels in patients with ALS and normal controls. We included 41 studies with 4,588 ALS patients and 6,344 control subjects, and 15 oxidative stress marker levels were subjected to random-effects meta-analysis. The results demonstrated that malondialdehyde (Hedges’ g, 1.168; 95% CI, 0.812 to 1.523; P