Organoperoxides can be reduced to alcohols with lithium aluminium hydride, as described in this idealized equation:
The phosphite esters and tertiary phosphines also effect reduction:
Cleavage to ketones and alcohols occurs in the base-catalyzed Kornblum–DeLaMare rearrangement, which involves the breaking of bonds within peroxides to form these products.
Some peroxides are drugs, whose action is based on the formation of radicals at desired locations in the organism. For example, artemisinin and its derivatives, such as artesunate, possess the most rapid action of all current drugs against falciparum malaria. Artesunate is also efficient in reducing egg production in Schistosoma haematobium infection.