Ambiguities in dietary antioxidant supplementation compared to calcium channel blockers therapy

Antioxidants are widely considered asbeing essential for an optimal healthso that supplementation with naturalantioxidants is advised for cancer, car-diovascular diseases and other variouspathologies, whereas supplementationwith vitamin pills may not be advised,as discussed below. By clicking “antiox-idant miracle” on a web search engineone gets about 2 million results. Thismainly relates to vitamin E and C, theformer being lipid-soluble and the latterbeingwater-soluble,whicharebestknownby laypeople. Antioxidants neutralizethe harmful effects of excessive forma-tion of reactive oxygen species (ROS)(Godfraind, 2004). They share this qual-ity with major therapeutic agents suchas dihydropyridine-type calcium channelblockers (Godfraind, 2004) that are estab-lished drugs for treating cardiovasculardiseases. In this opinion paper, we intendtocomparesomecardiovascularoutcomesof dietary antioxidant supplements versuscalcium channel blockers (CCBs).Both clinical and experimentalevidences indicate that ROS play animportant role in the development of sev-eral diseases including cancer (Chandeland Tuveson, 2014) and hypertension(Godfraind, 2004). The mitochondrialelectron transport chain and NADPHoxidases (NOXs) localized to the plasmamembrane and the membrane of cellu-lar organelles are producers of reactiveoxygen species. NOXs enzymes are afamily of heme-containing transmem-braneproteins(BedardandKrause,2007).These enzymes transport electrons acrossthe membrane from a cytosolic electrondonor to an electron acceptor located intheextracellularorintheluminalspace.NADPHservesaselectrondonorandoxy-genaselectronacceptorfortheproductionof reactive oxygen species (Bedard andKrause, 2007). ROS comprise superoxideanion(O2