Lipid peroxidation
Lipid peroxidation is the oxidative damage of fats, especially the polyunsaturated fats in cell membranes, by reactive oxygen species. Its runaway form drives ferroptosis, and its by-products are used as markers of oxidative stress.
Also called lipid oxidation, fat oxidation.
Ferroptosis is an iron-dependent cell death associated with lipid peroxidation (Miao 2022). GPX4 stops the chain by using glutathione to reduce lipid peroxides.
Its by-products serve as markers. Healthy older adults had higher malondialdehyde than a young reference group (Lizzo 2022), and older adults had higher plasma F2-isoprostanes, which fell after two weeks of cysteine and glycine (Sekhar 2011). In mouse cartilage cells under inflammatory stress, dihydrolipoic acid reduced lipid peroxidation and malondialdehyde (Chen 2026).
Sources
- Miao Y, Chen Y, Xue F et al. Contribution of ferroptosis and GPX4's dual functions to osteoarthritis progression. EBioMedicine 2022.
- Lizzo G, Migliavacca E, Lamers D et al. A Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial in Healthy Older Adults to Determine Efficacy of Glycine and N-Acetylcysteine Supplementation on Glutathione Redox Status and Oxidative Damage. Front Aging 2022.
- Sekhar RV, Patel SG, Guthikonda AP et al. Deficient synthesis of glutathione underlies oxidative stress in aging and can be corrected by dietary cysteine and glycine supplementation. Am J Clin Nutr 2011.
- Chen Y, Fang J, Zhou Z et al. Dihydrolipoic acid suppresses ferroptosis in chondrocytes to ameliorate the progression of osteoarthritis by modulating the FOXO1/TXNIP signaling pathway. Free Radic Biol Med 2026.
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