Search Results (9)

Vitamin D is a pleiotropic hormone that plays a vital role in regulating bone growth, maintaining calcium and phosphate homeostasis, modulating immune function, and a wide range of other pleiotrophic actions in humans, which have increased the attention for its clinical applications. Despite its importance, vitamin D deficiency is prevalent worldwide and is related to a range of pathophysiological conditions, including an increased risk of osteoporosis and chronic and autoimmune diseases. The recommended daily doses of vitamin D vary depending on genetics, age, sex, and health status, with specific doses recommended for infants, children, adults, and those at increased risk of deficiency or specific health conditions. Maintaining adequate vitamin D levels is essential for optimal health, and together with sun exposure, appropriate supplementation strategies can help achieve this goal. Vitamin D supplementation is commonly used to maintain adequate levels, and the optimal administration strategy, such as a daily dose vs. a bolus, is still being investigated. This review aims to understand vitamin D physiology and the impact of relevant vitamin D polymorphisms and to evaluate the role of a daily dose versus a bolus in maintaining optimal vitamin D levels and clinical health outcomes. It also provides suggested clinical guidelines for clinicians based on the most recent scientific evidence. Full article

Aging results from the progressive dysregulation of several molecular pathways and mTOR and AMPK signaling have been suggested to play a role in the complex changes in key biological networks involved in cellular senescence. Moreover, multiple factors, including poor nutritional balance, drive immunosenescence progression, one of the meaningful aspects of aging. Unsurprisingly, nutraceutical and pharmacological interventions could help maintain an optimal biological response by providing essential bioactive micronutrients required for the development, maintenance, and the expression of the immune response at all stages of life. In this regard, many studies have provided evidence of potential antiaging properties of resveratrol, as well as rapamycin and metformin. Indeed, in vitro and in vivo models have demonstrated for these molecules a number of positive effects associated with healthy aging. The current review focuses on the mechanisms of action of these three important compounds and their suggested use for the clinical treatment of immunosenescence and aging. Full article

Spirulina microalgae contain a plethora of nutrient and non-nutrient molecules providing brain health benefits. Numerous in vivo evidence has provided support for the brain health potential of spirulina, highlighting antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and neuroprotective mechanisms. Preliminary clinical studies have also suggested that spirulina can help to reduce mental fatigue, protect the vascular wall of brain vessels from endothelial damage and regulate internal pressure, thus contributing to the prevention and/or mitigating of cerebrovascular conditions. Furthermore, the use of spirulina in malnourished children appears to ameliorate motor, language, and cognitive skills, suggesting a reinforcing role in developmental mechanisms. Evidence of the central effect of spirulina on appetite regulation has also been shown. This review aims to understand the applicative potential of spirulina microalgae in the prevention and mitigation of brain disorders, highlighting the nutritional value of this “superfood”, and providing the current knowledge on relevant molecular mechanisms in the brain associated with its dietary introduction. Full article

General anesthesia in animal experiments is an ethical must and is required for all the procedures that are likely to cause more than slight or momentary pain. As anesthetics are known to deeply affect experimental findings, including electrophysiological recordings of brain activity, understanding their mechanism of action is of paramount importance. It is widely recognized that the depth and type of anesthesia introduce significant bias in electrophysiological measurements by affecting the shape of both spontaneous and evoked signals, e.g., modifying their latency and relative amplitude. Therefore, for a given experimental protocol, it is relevant to identify the appropriate anesthetic, to minimize the impact on neuronal circuits and related signals under investigation. This review focuses on the effect of different anesthetics on cortical electrical recordings, examining their molecular mechanisms of action, their influence on neuronal microcircuits and, consequently, their impact on cortical measurements. Full article

Balanced nutrition and appropriate dietary interventions are fundamental in the prevention and management of viral infections. Additionally, accurate modulation of the inflammatory response is necessary to achieve an adequate antiviral immune response. Many studies, both in vitro with mammalian cells and in vivo with small animal models, have highlighted the antiviral properties of resveratrol, rapamycin and metformin. The current review outlines the mechanisms of action of these three important compounds on the cellular pathways involved with viral replication and the mechanisms of virus-related diseases, as well as the current status of their clinical use. Full article

The individual response to nutrients and non-nutrient molecules can be largely affected by three important biological layers. The gut microbiome can alter the bioavailability of nutrients and other substances, the genome can influence molecule kinetics and dynamics, while the epigenome can modulate or amplify the properties of the genome. Today the use of omic techniques and bioinformatics, allow the construction of individual multilayer networks and thus the identification of personalized strategies that have recently been considered in all medical fields, including sports medicine. The composition of each athlete’s microbiome influences sports performance both directly by acting on energy metabolism and indirectly through the modulation of nutrient or non-nutrient molecule availability that ultimately affects the individual epigenome and the genome. Among non-nutrient molecules polyphenols can potentiate physical performances through different epigenetic mechanisms. Polyphenols interact with the gut microbiota, undergoing extensive metabolism to produce bioactive molecules, which act on transcription factors involved in mitochondrial biogenesis, antioxidant systems, glucose and lipid homeostasis, and DNA repair. This review focuses on polyphenols effects in sports performance considering the individual microbiota, epigenomic asset, and the genomic characteristics of athletes to understand how their supplementation could potentially help to modulate muscle inflammation and improve recovery. Full article

Thanks to omic disciplines and a systems biology approach, the study of essential oils and phytocomplexes has been lately rolling on a faster track. While metabolomic fingerprinting can provide an effective strategy to characterize essential oil contents, network pharmacology is revealing itself as an adequate, holistic platform to study the collective effects of herbal products and their multi-component and multi-target mediated mechanisms. Multivariate analysis can be applied to analyze the effects of essential oils, possibly overcoming the reductionist limits of bioactivity-guided fractionation and purification of single components. Thanks to the fast evolution of bioinformatics and database availability, disease-target networks relevant to a growing number of phytocomplexes are being developed. With the same potential actionability of pharmacogenomic data, phytogenomics could be performed based on relevant disease-target networks to inform and personalize phytocomplex therapeutic application. Full article

The holistic approach of personalized medicine, merging clinical and molecular characteristics to tailor the diagnostic and therapeutic path to each individual, is steadily spreading in clinical practice. Psychiatric disorders represent one of the most difficult diagnostic challenges, given their frequent mixed nature and intrinsic variability, as in bipolar disorders and depression. Patients misdiagnosed as depressed are often initially prescribed serotonergic antidepressants, a treatment that can exacerbate a previously unrecognized bipolar condition. Thanks to the use of the patient’s genomic profile, it is possible to recognize such risk and at the same time characterize specific genetic assets specifically associated with bipolar spectrum disorder, as well as with the individual response to the various therapeutic options. This provides the basis for molecular diagnosis and the definition of pharmacogenomic profiles, thus guiding therapeutic choices and allowing a safer and more effective use of psychotropic drugs. Here, we report the pharmacogenomics state of the art in bipolar disorders and suggest an algorithm for therapeutic regimen choice. Full article

Principal component analysis (PCA) multivariate analysis was applied to study the cytotoxic activity of essential oils from various species of the Pistacia genus on human tumor cell lines. In particular, the cytotoxic activity of essential oils obtained from P. lentiscus, P. lentiscus var. chia (mastic gum), P. terebinthus, P. vera, and P. integerrima, was screened on three human adenocarcinoma cell lines: MCF-7 (breast), 2008 (ovarian), and LoVo (colon). The results indicate that all the Pistacia phytocomplexes, with the exception of mastic gum oil, induce cytotoxic effects on one or more of the three cell lines. PCA highlighted the presence of different cooperating clusters of bioactive molecules. Cluster variability among species, and even within the same species, could explain some of the differences seen among samples suggesting the presence of both common and species-specific mechanisms. Single molecules from one of the most significant clusters were tested, but only bornyl-acetate presented cytotoxic activity, although at much higher concentrations (IC₅₀ = 138.5 µg/mL) than those present in the essential oils, indicating that understanding of the full biological effect requires a holistic vision of the phytocomplexes with all its constituents. Full article