**1. Introduction**

408 Lipoproteins – Role in Health and Diseases

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Phospholipids containing polyunsaturated fatty acids are highly prone to modification by reactive oxygen species. They tend to undergo lipid peroxidation to form OxPLs which induce cytotoxicity and apoptosis and plays a significant role in inflammation. There are reports that provide insights for involvement of OxPLs in interleukin transcription, phenotype switching of smooth muscle cells and apoptotic mechanisms of the modified phospholipids. Thus peroxidation greatly alters the physiochemical properties of membrane lipid bilayers and consequently induces signaling depending upon the formation or reorganization of membrane domains or specific molecular binding (Deigner et al, 2008). Distinct OxPLs species may interact with specific binding sites and receptors leading to the activation of individual signaling pathways. The most prevalent human coronary atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease that occurs due to lipid abnormalities. Pro-inflammatory oxidized low-density lipoprotein (OxLDL) has been suggested to be a link between lipid accumulation and inflammation in vessel walls. Increased levels of phospholipids' oxidation products have been detected in different organs and pathological states, including atherosclerotic vessels (Watson et al 1997, Subbanagounder et al 2000), inflamed lung (Yoshimi et al 2005, Nakamura et al 1998 ), nonalcoholic liver disease (Ikura et al 2006), plasma of patients with coronary artery disease (Tsimikas et al 2005), as well as in apoptotic cells (Huber et al 2002, Chang et al 2004), virus-infected cells (Van Lenten et al 2004) and cells stimulated with inflammatory agonists (Subbanagounder et al 2002). Moreover, studies have been done on two HDL-associated enzymes, serum paraoxonase (PON1) and PAF-acetylhydrolase (PAF-AH), which are responsible for hydrolysis of plasma oxidized phospholipids (Forte et al 2002) thereby providing evidence for their role in atherosclerosis. Another important marker of oxidative stress is the association of OxPLs with the apolipoprotein B-100 particle (OxPLs/apoB) of

© 2012 Ashraf and Srivastava, licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2012 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

LDL. Increased levels of OxPLs/apoB are implicated in coronary artery disease, progression of carotid and femoral atherosclerosis and the prediction of cardiovascular events (Tsimikas et al 2005).
