Chronic diseases, inflammation, and spices: how are they linked?

Abstract

Extensive research within the last several decades has revealed that the major risk factors for most chronic diseases are infections, obesity, alcohol, tobacco, radiation, environmental pollutants, and diet. It is now well established that these factors induce chronic diseases through induction of inflammation. However, inflammation could be either acute or chronic. Acute inflammation persists for a short duration and is the host defense against infections and allergens, whereas the chronic inflammation persists for a long time and leads to many chronic diseases including cancer, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, respiratory diseases, etc. Numerous lines of evidence suggest that the aforementioned risk factors induced cancer through chronic inflammation. First, transcription factors NF-κB and STAT3 that regulate expression of inflammatory gene products, have been found to be constitutively active in most cancers; second, chronic inflammation such as pancreatitis, prostatitis, hepatitis etc. leads to cancers; third, activation of NF-κB and STAT3 leads to cancer cell proliferation, survival, invasion, angiogenesis and metastasis; fourth, activation of NF-κB and STAT3 leads to resistance to chemotherapy and radiation, and hypoxia and acidic conditions activate these transcription factors. Therefore, targeting these pathways may provide opportunities for both prevention and treatment of cancer and other chronic diseases. We will discuss in this review the potential of various dietary agents such as spices and its components in the suppression of inflammatory pathways and their roles in the prevention and therapy of cancer and other chronic diseases. In fact, epidemiological studies do indicate that cancer incidence in countries such as India where spices are consumed daily is much lower (94/100,000) than those where spices are not consumed such as United States (318/100,000), suggesting the potential role of spices in cancer prevention.

A survival analysis of COVID-19 in the Mexican population

“…This data allows us to hypothesize that the presence of chronic diseases not only increases the risk of complicated disease but even the risk of acquiring the novel coronavirus. A possible explanation is that chronic in ammation, negative effects on immunomodulation and metabolic stress that characterized systemic diseases decrease the ability to react against external agents; in this case, SARS-CoV-2 (15)(16)(17)(18).…”

The Role of Wine in Modulating Inflammatory Processes: A Review

“…Intestinal inflammation was the most common condition investigated, using Caco-2 and HT29 cells. Both are well characterized epithelial cell lines, derived from a primary colon tumor; thanks to their similarities with enterocytes of the human small intestine, they are a suitable model to study effects/absorption of food substances [12][13][14][15]. Nicod and co-workers [15] and Nunes and co-workers [16,17] evaluated the effects of wine polyphenols on inflammatory biomarkers production by CaCo-2 and HT-29 cells, respectively.…”

“…The dysregulation of various signaling pathways, such as the nuclear factor kappa-B (NF-κB) and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3), seems to be involved in inflammation. In fact, these factors regulate the transcription of specific enzymes, such as cycloxigenase-2 (COX-2), matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9), and inflammatory cytokines (tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), interleukin-1, -6, -8, (IL-1, IL-6, IL-8), and chemokines) [12]. The relationship between inflammation and chronic diseases has been suggested by different papers [11,13], as well as the possible positive role of wine in this process by in vitro and in vivo models.…”

“…Neither regular (500 mL/day for 2 weeks) nor acute (200 mL/one dose) consumption of red wine were associated with a positive effect on inflammatory biomarkers associated with immunological responses such as neutrophils and monocytes phagocytic activity and T cell apoptosis in healthy subjects [39,40], confirming that NF-κB is a possible mediator of the wine protective effects. Table 4 summarizes, for each physiological system, the results of in vitro, animal, and human studies reviewed in this paper [12][13][14][15][16][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][28][29][30][32][33][34][37][38][39][40][41][42][43]. [39,40] * To compare wine amount intake in human studies, a 70 kg average weigh was used.…”

Translational Science: Turning Discovery into Health

“…It is observed that exact management of chronic diseases is only possible when we will have in depth scientific investigation i.e., natural derived bioactive compounds, structure elucidation, understanding molecular pathways of disease etc [15].…”