这是日本医科大学太田成男教授给我的新书《氢分子生物学》写的序言。前面是我翻译的中文，后面是他的原版英文序言。

我很荣幸介绍这本氢气医学相关中文书。本书主编孙学军博士是氢气医学领域的领军学者之一，作为他的挚友，欣闻他正着手编写本书，本人长期研究领域线粒体功能，在2005年开始启动氢分子生物学功能的研究。由于长期对线粒体功能的研究，我们积累了许多氧化应激和活性氧方面的知识和经验，也是2007年可在《自然医学》发表第一篇氢气生物学论文的基础。这一论文非常幸运地启动了国际上氢气生物学效应的研究热潮。学军教授是较早跟踪这一研究领域的学者之一，我非常清楚地记得，当他告诉我他的小组发现一系列研究结果时，我非常吃惊。更让我惊喜的是，他们发现采用氢气饱和生理盐水腹腔和静脉注射可以用于治疗疾病。对氢气的临床应用来讲，这是一个绝妙的好主意。学者们现在已经建立了多种利用氢气治疗疾病的技术，如呼吸氢气、注射氢气生理盐水、饮用氢气水、氢气水沐浴等。在进行氢气生物学研究的早期，人们仅把氢气作为一种抗氧化物质，然而，业已证明该气体具有更广泛的生物学功能，如可诱导抗氧化相关酶的表达、通过下调系列促炎症因子的表达减少炎症反应、具有降低细胞凋亡和提高能量代谢的作用。氢气生物学效应的发现将对人类疾病治疗和健康防护理念带来革命性影响。我希望每个读者可以喜欢这本书，并致力于发展氢气医学研究事业。

太田成男教授

日本医科大学医学院

老年和发育研究所

生物化学和细胞生物学系

Hydrogen medicine revolution

It is a great honor for me to introduce the publication of a book regarding “Hydrogen Medicine” in China. I am also very happy to hear that a special friend of mine, Dr. Xuejun Sun has edited this book, who is one of the pioneers on “Hydrogen Medicine”. I launched the project on the biological function of molecular hydrogen in 2005 as the extension of mitochondrial research. Since I have had a lot of experiences to manipulate oxidative stress or reactive oxygen species through the mitochondrial research, I was able to publish the first paper in Nature Medicine in 2007. The publication in Nature Medicine was quite lucky to announce the effects of hydrogen to the world. Xuejun has soon followed our results. I remember the e-mail message from him informing me that I would be surprised by the results by his group. In fact, I was really surprised to find the great application of hydrogen-rich saline, which can be used by intrapersonal or intravenous injection. That is a really good idea to develop the application of hydrogen. Now there are several methods to ingest hydrogen; inhalation of hydrogen gas; injection of hydrogen-rich saline; drinking hydrogen-dissolved water and taking hydrogen bath to ingest hydrogen via the skin. In the beginning of the research, it was revealed that hydrogen acts as an anti-oxidant, but now it has been revealed that hydrogen has multi-functions in our body; hydrogen induces enzymes involved in anti-oxidation, down-regulates several pro-inflammatory cytokines to suppress inflammation, prevents apoptosis and enhances energy metabolism. The excellent orchestra of each function may give us a great benefit for the preventive or therapeutic applications. Indeed, clinical trials have stared for several disorders with great success. I hope that everybody would enjoy this book to develop the hydrogen medicine.

Shigeo Ohta

Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology,

Institute of Development and Aging Sciences,

Graduate School of Medicine, Nippon Medical School,

1-396 Kosugi-cho, Nakahara-ku, Kawasaki-city,

Kanagawa-pref., 211-8533 Japan

TEL +81-44-733-9267 Fax +81-44-733-9268