Bioavailability of nutraceuticals: Role of the food matrix, processing conditions, the gastrointestinal tract, and nanodelivery systems

Abstract

Nowadays, many consumers prefer foods with a high content of nutraceuticals that contribute to the prevention or healing of chronic diseases. Therefore, in recent years, more and more researchers have studied the bioefficiency, safety, and toxicity of nutraceutical-enriched foods. The key stage of nutraceutical bioefficiency is oral bioavailability, which involves the following processes: the release of nutraceuticals from food matrices or nanocarriers in gastrointestinal fluids, the solubilization of nutraceuticals and their interaction with other components of gastrointestinal fluids, the absorption of nutraceuticals by the epithelial layer, and the chemical and biochemical transformations into epithelial cells. These processes are endogenous factors that greatly influence the bioavailability of nutraceuticals. In addition to endogenous factors, the bioavailability of nutraceuticals is also affected by exogenous factors, such as: physicochemical properties of nutraceuticals, food matrix, food processing and storage, and so forth. Both the endogenous and exogenous factors are comprehensively analyzed in this review. Thus, the physicochemical and enzymatic processes involved in food digestion are described, highlighting the role of each stage of gastrointestinal tract (mouth, stomach, and intestine) in nutraceuticals bioaccessibility. The structure and functions of the mucus and epithelial layers, the mechanisms involved in the active and passive transport of nutraceuticals through the cell membrane, and phase I and phase II metabolism reactions are also discussed. Finally, this review focuses on several types of bioactive-loaded nanocarriers such as lipid-based, surfactant-based, and biopolymeric nanocarriers that improve the bioavailability of nutraceuticals. K E Y W O R D Sbioaccessibility, bioavailability, food matrix, gastrointestinal fate, nanocarriers, nutraceuticals 954

Room Temperature Nanoencapsulation of Bioactive Eicosapentaenoic Acid Rich Oil within Whey Protein Microparticles

“…Figure 2A shows the manner in which EPA-rich oil was entrapped within the WPC matrix. It consisted of a spongelike structure, which is known to enhance oil preservation [33] and favor the oil absorption in the gastrointestinal tract [34]. The internal morphology of the microcapsules coincides with the measured size, i.e., 0.762 ± 0.001 µ m, of the droplets in the emulsion ( Figure 2B).…”

Current Nanocarrier Strategies Improve Vitamin B12 Pharmacokinetics, Ameliorate Patients’ Lives, and Reduce Costs

“…pH and lytic enzymes are just a part of the complex picture. Indeed, researchers still do not completely understand, and cannot characterize, how specific nanocarriers are absorbed or how they interact with tissues [75]. In Figure 2, we report some mechanisms that allow nanoparticles to go beyond the intestinal barrier.…”

Bioavailability and bioaccessibility of food bioactive compounds; overview and assessment by in vitro methods

“…Upon analyzing the similarities and dissimilarities in drug and food behaviors during digestion, and the criteria at the basis of BCS, McClements et al 2015proposed a new nutraceutical classification scheme, called NuBAC. The authors classified nutraceuticals according to the three main factors limiting BA: bioaccessibility (B * ), absorption (A * ), and transformation (T * ), as well as their mechanisms, described previously (Dima et al, 2020b). Each major factor includes other factors symbolized by the letters naming the mechanisms by which they affect BA ( Figure 2).…”

“…As described in Section 2, a bioactive compound is a nutrient that, when introduced into a living organism, produces a biological signal assimilated to the therapeutic effect. Numerous researchers investigated the factors that affect the oral BA of bioactive compounds, also highlighting ways to improve their oral BA (Dima et al., 2020b).…”

“…For assessing oral BA, most food science researchers investigated three main factors that affect BA: bioaccessibility (B:), absorption (A:), and transformation (T:) of biomolecules (Hur, Lim, Decker, & McClements, 2011; Ozturk, Argin, Ozilgen, & McClements, 2015; Wang & Chen, 2017), as described in Section 3. Each of these major factors is based on different specific processes described extensively by Dima, Assadpour, Dima, and Jafari (2020b). In terms of the main factors and their specific processes that affect oral BA, McClements, Li, and Xiao (2015) proposed a nutraceutical classification scheme called Nutraceutical Bioavailability Classification Scheme (NuBAC), similar to the pharmaceutical classification proposed by Amidon, Lennernas, Shah, and Crison (1995), known as the Biopharmaceutical Classification System (BCS), which will be discusse in Section 3.…”