Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology - Volume 11, Issue 8, 2010

Cardiovascular diseases remain the primary cause for the morbidity and mortality in the developed countries including United States of America. Maintaining a healthy heart is particularly important for those with a family history of coronary heart disease including hypertension, heart attack and atherosclerosis. Regular consumption of healthy food and maintaining a healthy life style certainly help maintaining a disease free li Read More

Many natural products, including vitamin E, garlic, purpurogallin, flaxseed and its components [secoisolariciresinol diglucoside (SDG) and flax lignan complex (FLC)] and resveratrol have been reported to suppress hypercholesterolemic atherosclerosis. It is known that all of the drugs that suppress the development of atherosclerosis do not regress and/or slow the progression of atherosclerosis. To be of potential benefit in patients w Read More

It is now widely accepted that oxidative stress induced by reactive oxygen and nitrogen species is involved in the pathogenesis of various diseases such as atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease and consequently the role of antioxidants in the prevention and treatment of diseases has received much attention of scientists, clinicians and general public. However, most of the large clinical intervention trials of antioxidants Read More

Several recent studies have shown the protective effects of resveratrol in various experimental conditions and pathological animal models. Clinical studies also indicate the beneficial effects of resveratrol in different human diseases. Resveratrol produces a cascade against of events from the initial death-provoking signal, DNA fragmentation, and cell death. Researchers recognized the beneficial effect of resveratrol, as an imp Read More

Cardiovascular dysfunction is leading cause for the mortality of diabetic individuals, in part due to a specific cardiomyopathy, and due to altered endothelial dependent/independent vascular reactivity. Cardiovascular complications result from multiple parameters including glucotoxicity, lipotoxicity, fibrosis and mitochondrial uncoupling. Oxidative stress arises from an imbalance between the production of reactive oxygen Read More

Fruits and vegetables are key foods whose high ingestion is associated with the improvement of numerous pathological conditions, including hypertension. Such health promoting actions have been increasingly ascribed to the antioxidant characteristics of different polyphenols in fruits and vegetables. Consequently, based on this assumption, many beverages and foods rich in polyphenols, grape, tea, cocoa, and soy product Read More

Calendula officinalis of family Asteraceae, also known as marigold, has been widely used from time immemorial in Indian and Arabic cultures as an anti-inflammatory agent to treat minor skin wound and infections, burns, bee stings, sunburn and cancer. At a relatively high dose, calendula can lower blood pressure and cholesterol. Since inflammatory responses are behind many cardiac diseases, we sought to evaluate if calend Read More

The stem bark of Terminalia arjuna (Roxb.) is used by the Ayurvedic physicians in India for the treatment of various cardiovascular diseases, collectively referred to as hritroga. It has been extensively studied in animal models to demonstrate cardioprotective properties, ranging from positive inotropic- , hypolipdemic-, coronary vasodilatory- and antioxidant effects to induction of stress protein in heart. Various bioactiv Read More

Chronic inflammation and oxidative stress increase with advancing age and appear to be involved in the pathogenesis of coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death worldwide. There is a need for animal models that reflect the increases in pro-inflammatory cytokines and oxidative damage observed during aging in humans. We therefore aimed to investigate the suitability of the fast-aging senescence-accelerated m Read More

The incidence and mortality of heart disease are the highest among all diseases all over the world, and are still increasing with a world wide rise in living standards. To find effective treatments for prevention and curing heart disease, it is important to understand the mechanisms behind the cause and the development of the disease. Increasing evidences have shown that reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen s Read More

Currently, health beneficial roles of natural products attract much attention and diverse functional ingredients have been extensively studied their preventive effect in many diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and cancer. Squalene is one of those examples. It distributes in nature from plant to animal but extraordinarily concentrated in the liver of certain species of shark (Squalidae family) as it was first identified as a he Read More

Excess carbohydrate in the diet may initiate a chronic state of oxidative stress exacerbating the clinical and biochemical symptoms of diet-induced type 2 diabetes, especially glucose intolerance, lipid abnormalities and cardiovascular complications. This study has tested whether green tea, rich in antioxidants, improves both cardiovascular symptoms and glucose intolerance and also reduces oxidative stress in rats fed a high car Read More

With recent advances in nutrition sciences, natural products and health-promoting foods have received extensive attention from both health professionals and the common population. The flavonoid rich fraction (FRF) of Dioscorea bulbifera Linn. has a strong free radical scavenging activity. FRF (150 mg/kg) when intervened for a period of 35 days prior to isoproterenol (ISO) challenge to rats maintained the creatine k Read More

Apoptosis of cardiomyocytes induced by oxidative stress play a critical role in cardiac dysfunction associated with ventricular remodeling and heart failure. We recently reported that leonurine attenuated hypoxia-induced cardiomyocyte damage. In this study, we investigated the mechanism of leonurine (originally from Herba leonuri but we synthesized it chemically, it as also called SCM-198) in protecting hydrogen peroxide (H2 Read More

Diabetes mellitus is associated with abnormal cardiomyocyte Ca2+ transients and contractile performance. We investigated the possibility that an alteration in inositol trisphosphate/phospholipase C (IP3/PLC) signalling may be involved in this dysfunction. Phosphatidic acid stimulates cardiomyocyte contraction through an IP3/PLC signaling cascade. We also tested a novel therapeutic intervention to assess its efficacy i Read More

Growing evidence indicates that the Mediterranean diet is beneficial to human health. Many epidemiological and research studies have reported that this diet pattern is able to limit the development and progression of coronary heart disease, one of the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in both developed and developing countries worldwide. There is now a large consensus about recommending Mediterranean di Read More