Artificial intelligence as a potential tool for oxidative stress estimation in medicine

Aim: Oxidative stress (OS) remains an intensively studied scientific problem. The quantitative measurement of OS is an unsolved task, largely due to the existence of numerous complex, non-linear interactions of its components, which can not be measured by traditional statistical methods. Modern mathematical processing based on artificial intelligence (AI) could be a promising method of OS assessment in medicine. The aim of the study was to investigate the potential possibilities of using multilayer neural networks to improve the diagnostic informativeness of the OS indicator—antioxidant (AO) activity (AOA) in patients with cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). Methods: A cross-sectional study of a sample of 856 people, healthy volunteers and several groups of patients with CVDs (hypertension, including those complicated by coronary heart disease and/or cerebral ischemia, chronic cerebral ischemia), was carried out. The potentiometric method of determining the OS indicator, index of blood serum AOA, was used in comparison with a number of laboratory tests and clinical data. After the results of linear statistical evaluations were not satisfactory enough, а multilayer perceptron classifier was constructed for data analysis. Results: By training a neural network, it was possible to assign a patient to one of the above-mentioned groups with 85% accuracy on the basis of 8 parameters selected from all the patients’ clinical and laboratory data, including the AOA value. Conclusions: The use of multilayer neural networks can improve the diagnostic value of information obtained during the measurement of AOA index, in combination with simple laboratory tests in patients with CVDs. The application of AI algorithms is a promising tool to improve the laboratory measurement of OS and a potential solution to overcome the contradictions in the existing approaches to the evaluation of OS.