Animals at risk oxidative stress: alarm of the Department of Health !

Even the animals escape the effects, positive and negative, of free radicals. A unique international scientific literature, accumulated over the last ten years, especially with the Panel Carratelli, documents it very clear.

For example, Labradors, widely used to search for people in the rubble after a natural disaster or for the detection of explosives in the context of the prevention of terrorism, exhibit values ​​of d-ROMs Test well below those recorded in people. Probably because during evolution they have retained the ability to produce vitamin C, a powerful antioxidant, directly from glucose (Pasquini and Iorio, 2008). And it is for this reason that we, unlike dogs, are forced to take this precious nutrient from the outside through the fruits and vegetables.

Thus, "fishing" from our database, we are aware that there are now numerous animal species that we know the reference values ​​of the d-ROMs Test and, in many cases, also of OXY-Adsorbent Test: from fish to birds, from sheep to cattle, from rodents to pigs. Singular is the study, for example, through these analytical tools, of a vast colony of penguins in Anctartica.

The novelty is that now the Department of Health in Italy, in the National Integrated Plan 2011-214, has officially add the d-ROMs Test and the OXY-Adsorbent Test (with the codes, respectively, NK 2324 and NK 2325), in the internal accredited tests to evaluate the animal welfare (see here). The reference laboratories for carrying out the evaluations are those of the Headquarters of the Institute Zooprophylactic of Lombardy and Emilia Romagna (Brescia).

Interviewed in this regard, Eugenio Luigi Iorio, president of the International Observatory of Oxidative Stress - which is in constant contact with the National Institute of Health - said that "the time is now ripe for a similar official recognition of these methods even in  human, where the experimental and clinical evidence in favor are much higher than those found in Zooprophylactic field.  Paradoxically, Health Institutions  have not yet activated in a reasonable manner. "

At least for now, anyway, thanks to the opportunity to assess oxidative stress, our four-legged friends, but also farm animals, can sleep more peacefully. And us with them.