Antioxidant activity applying an improved ABTS radical cation decolorization assay.

Co-Planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain—3-Dimensional Proportional System: An Approach to Cerebral Imaging, J. Talairach, P. Tournoux. Georg Thieme Verlag, New York (1988), 122 pp., 130 figs. DM 268

The use of and search for drugs and dietary supplements derived from plants have accelerated in recent years. Ethnopharmacologists, botanists, microbiologists, and natural-products chemists are combing the Earth for phytochemicals and “leads” which could be developed for treatment of infectious diseases. While 25 to 50% of current pharmaceuticals are derived from plants, none are used as antimicrobials. Traditional healers have long used plants to prevent or cure infectious conditions; Western medicine is trying to duplicate their successes. Plants are rich in a wide variety of secondary metabolites, such as tannins, terpenoids, alkaloids, and flavonoids, which have been found in vitro to have antimicrobial properties. This review attempts to summarize the current status of botanical screening efforts, as well as in vivo studies of their effectiveness and toxicity. The structure and antimicrobial properties of phytochemicals are also addressed. Since many of these compounds are currently available as unregulated botanical preparations and their use by the public is increasing rapidly, clinicians need to consider the consequences of patients self-medicating with these preparations.

Plant Products as Antimicrobial Agents

http://www.dietcan.net/docs/Polifenoles%20en%20alimentos%20y%20biodisponibilidad.pdf

Polyphenols: food sources and bioavailability

This review summarizes the multifaceted aspects of antioxidants and the basic kinetic models of inhibited autoxidation and analyzes the chemical principles of antioxidant capacity assays. Depending upon the reactions involved, these assays can roughly be classified into two types:  assays based on hydrogen atom transfer (HAT) reactions and assays based on electron transfer (ET). The majority of HAT-based assays apply a competitive reaction scheme, in which antioxidant and substrate compete for thermally generated peroxyl radicals through the decomposition of azo compounds. These assays include inhibition of induced low-density lipoprotein autoxidation, oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC), total radical trapping antioxidant parameter (TRAP), and crocin bleaching assays. ET-based assays measure the capacity of an antioxidant in the reduction of an oxidant, which changes color when reduced. The degree of color change is correlated with the sample's antioxidant concentrations. ET-based assays include th...

The Chemistry behind Antioxidant Capacity Assays

Prospective study of dietary Non Enzymatic Antioxidant Capacity on the risk of hip fracture in the elderly

Recent studies have suggested that microbiota is involved in several important physiological and immunological functions for the host, and microbiota disorders are associated with many and diverse human diseases such as allergies, inflammatory bowel diseases, immune-related diseases, as well as obesity-associated illnesses. Probiotics and prebiotics are largely used to ameliorate immune-related disorders, however, use of synbiotics as a combination of probiotic and prebiotics is still not widespread. Despite the limited number of studies performed until now on synbiotics, preliminary evidence shows promising capacities to modulate microbiota composition and seems to be active in the amelioration of some immune-related and obesity-associated disorders. However, further studies on the use of synbiotics should be conducted to better understand mechanisms of action and potential use in the prevention and treatment immune-related diseases.

Synbiotics: A New Strategy to Improve the Immune System from the Gut to Peripheral Sites

Reformulation of food products is one of the measures needed for reducing salt consumption. Accordingly, the World Health Organization (WHO) recently proposed global sodium benchmarks for different food categories to be used for setting national policies. Therefore, the sodium content of cereal-based products currently sold in Italy was compared with the WHO benchmarks, highlighting those categories primarily needing a reformulation. To this aim, the sodium content and several declarations (i.e., nutrition and health claims, organic or gluten free declaration) were retrieved from 2917 cereal-based products sold on the Italian market. All “minimally processed breakfast cereals” had a sodium content below the benchmark, while “flatbreads” and “leavened bread” had the highest percentage of items above the respective sodium benchmarks. Flatbreads and “crackers/savory biscuits” showed the highest median delta values from the respective benchmarks of 360 and 278 mg/100 g, respectively. Large variability in terms of percentage of products with sodium content above the benchmark was observed within the same categories, as well as among products with different declarations. A large number of food products currently sold on the Italian market have a sodium content above the benchmark. This result suggests the need to reformulate many food products currently on the market to achieve the WHO/United Nations (UN) objective of 30% global reduction in sodium intake by 2025.

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Sodium Content in Cereal-Based Products Sold in Italy: How Far Are We from the Global Benchmarks?

Recent phytochemical study of several Italian species of Linaria, including rare endemic species, allowed a chemotaxomic approach to the genus based on phylogenetic trends in Lamiiflorae.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1934578X0800300602

Mauro Serafini

Papers

Prospective study of dietary Non Enzymatic Antioxidant Capacity on the risk of hip fracture in the elderly

Synbiotics: A New Strategy to Improve the Immune System from the Gut to Peripheral Sites

Sodium Content in Cereal-Based Products Sold in Italy: How Far Are We from the Global Benchmarks?

Chemotaxonomy of Linaria Genus by Nor-Iridoids Distribution

A new iridoid diglucoside from Harpagophytum procumbens.