Importantly, endothelial dysfunction mediated through NO loss is an early hallmark event in atherosclerotic plaque formation, preceding vascular damage.
Since plasma creatinine (and other markers) can only start to rise when renal function is already compromised, research is rather directed towards identification and validation of markers of the preceding tissue damage, e.g. of cell cycle arrest [ 2, 3].
3 In another recent study it was suggested that WM affection is associated with cognitive impairment in PD, and that brain changes progress in a sequential pattern with hypoperfusion preceding WM damage and grey matter atrophy.
However, we have shown that MRI yields interesting information about inflammation preceding cartilage damage and the strong associations between baseline osteitis and synovitis and the three-year cartilage score suggest that these measures could be important imaging biomarkers to indicate those at highest risk for cartilage damage progression.
3 While conventional radiographs remain the standard reference methods for assessing destructive skeletal changes in patients with RA, radiographs are inherently limited by the lack of ability to assess pre-erosive changes that precede damage to the osseous component of the joint, a stage of disease that had been thought to be irreversible.
This model of DNA damage and repair in which DDR precedes DNA damage is the reverse of the classical model based on damage induced by ionizing and UV-radiations and chemicals wherein DDR is activated after DNA damage.
Previous studies [ 31– 33] demonstrated that optic nerve or retinal nerve fiber layer damage precedes visual field damage in glaucoma, so we used topographic analysis of the optic nerve and retinal nerve fiber layer to determine progression in our sample.
sLOX-1 represents a biomarker for plaque rupture or vulnerability, but not for myocardial damage; as plaque instability or rupture precedes cardiac damage in acute myocardial infarction, the sLOX-1 level increase is expected to precede the increase of biomarkers of cardiac injury.
In these cases chromatin structural defects clearly precede DNA damage, placing epigenetic and chroma-tin structure changes upstream of DNA damage events.
These biochemical changes may precede structural damage.
