Bonita Springs Psychiatrist Argues Failed Antioxidant Trials Were Testing the Wrong Idea, Not the Wrong Theory

International Journal of Molecular Sciences article by Dr. Leonard Lado argues antioxidant trials failed because they tested the wrong model.

BONITA SPRINGS, FL, UNITED STATES, October 19, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Why did decades of antioxidant drug trials for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease fail? A new peer-reviewed article in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences argues the answer is not that oxidative stress is unimportant - it is that the trials were designed around a model of oxidative stress the underlying biology had already abandoned.

The article, "From Damage to Dysregulation: Reframing Oxidative Stress and Redox Homeostasis in Central Nervous System Disease," was written by Dr. Leonard A. Lado of Lado Healing Institute in Bonita Springs, Florida. It was published September 19, 2026 and is free to read at https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/27/18/8374

Oxidative stress has been documented in the brains of patients with neurodegenerative disease for seventy years. Yet large trials of antioxidant supplements like vitamin E and coenzyme Q10 largely failed to slow those diseases, and the field concluded oxidative damage was a consequence of disease rather than a cause. Dr. Lado argues that conclusion rested on a category error: the trials measured accumulated damage after the fact and treated it by subtraction, giving the same compound at the same dose to every patient without measuring whether each patient's own antioxidant control system - a regulated loop built around the KEAP1 and NRF2 proteins - was intact, failing, or overwhelmed.

The paper identifies four design failures shared by the major trials - wrong stage, wrong compound, wrong readout, and wrong population - and points to cases where the same drug failed in unselected patients but succeeded when enrollment was restricted by measurement, as with edaravone in ALS. It proposes an operational definition of "redox reserve" and a four-axis framework for staging patients before treatment. Dr. Lado is explicit that the framework is a proposal requiring validation, and the paper states the conditions under which its own hypothesis should be abandoned.

"It is as if we gave every patient the same blood pressure pill without measuring anyone's blood pressure, then concluded blood pressure has nothing to do with stroke," said Dr. Lado. "Some of the compounds we abandoned may work in the right patients. Finding them requires measurement, not new chemistry."

About Dr. Leonard Lado: board-certified psychiatrist and founder of Lado Healing Institute in Bonita Springs, Florida. His research focuses on oxidative stress and redox regulation in neuropsychiatric disease.

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Dr. Leonard Lado
Lado Healing Institute
+1 239-405-2669
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