The pulmonary biology of isoprostanes

Isoprostanes are widely recognized as useful markers of membrane lipid peroxidation. It seems to be less well appreciated, however, that they also elicit important biological responses, even though this was first shown at the same time that they were introduced as markers of oxidative stress. The past several years have seen the list of cells/tissues which are sensitive to isoprostanes grow considerably: in fact, as we summarize here, there is now evidence that essentially every cell type in the lung responds in some pathologically relevant way to isoprostanes. In this sense, they might well be considered as not just markers of oxidative stress and inflammation, but also as a novel group of inflammatory mediators. Moreover, in addition to their pathological effects, we summarize here the evidence which has led us to hypothesize that isoprostanes could play an important role in vascular smooth muscle physiology as "endothelium-derived hyperpolarizing factors."