Introduction

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the most common cause of mortality in the Western world and accounts for up to a third of all deaths worldwide. Cardiovascular disease is multifactorial and involves complex interplay between lifestyle (diet, smoking, exercise) and fixed (genotype, age, menopausal status, gender) causative factors. The commonality between multifactorial lifestyle and fixed factors is the body’s antioxidant and gasotransmitters producing pathways.

Free radicals are known as reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS). They generated in our body by various endogenous systems, exposure to different physiochemical conditions or pathological states. A balance between free radicals and antioxidants is necessary for proper physiological function and for normal metabolic functions. These molecules are inherently unstable as they possess a lone pair of electrons and hence become highly reactive. They are able to alter lipids, proteins, and DNA and trigger a number of human diseases. Application of external sources of antioxidants or discovering the phisiological patways of antioxidant molecules and their synthethyzing enzymes are important for the  understanding of many pathological conditions.

Thus, the search for effective, nontoxic natural compounds with antioxidant activity has been intensified in recent years. Over the last decades, behind the antioxidant enzymes, gasotransmitters have emerged as potent cytoprotective mediators in different animal models and cellular injury. Exogenous and endogenous manipulations of these gasotransmitters or their enzymes have been shown to modulate cardioprotection by inducing a number of cytoprotective mechanisms such as: induction of vasodilatation, inhibition of apoptosis, modulation of mitochondrial respiration, induction of antioxidants, and inhibition of inflammation.

There appears to be some crosstalk between the gases and antioxidant enzymes, which can provide synergistic effects and additional regulatory effects. This note will discuss several mechanisms of gasotransmitters and antioxidant mediated cytoprotection, as well as provide a brief discussion on the complex interactions between them in the management of cardioprotection.