Effect of Bioactive Nutriments in Health and Disease: The Role of Epigenetic Modifications

Abstract

Recently, a list of clinical, physiopathological, and epidemiological studies has underlined the detrimental or beneficial role of nutritional factors in some chronic diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. It has been described that lifestyle, environmental conditions, and nutritional compounds influence gene expression. In the last instance, it has been demonstrated that bioactive nutrimental components are important signal molecules that carry information from the external environment and could affect in biological terms, processes related to gene expression. Bioactive nutriments can work in different ways: regulating the chromatin structure or factors that directly regulate the activity of nuclear receptors. The relevance of the changes in the chromatin structure has been demonstrated by the fact that many chronic diseases and metabolic disorders are related with changes in DNA methylation patterns. For this reason, recently, the bioactive food nutriments have been investigated to characterize the molecular mechanism involved in changes of the chromatin structure, such as acetylation and methylation, and their potential benefit on chronic diseases. The dietary compounds intake involved in the regulation of epigenetic modifications can provide significant health effects and may prevent various pathological processes involved in the development of cancer and other serious diseases.

Natural Bioactive Products as Epigenetic Modulators for Treating Neurodegenerative Disorders

“…After ingestion, folate (vitamin B9) is converted to tetrahydrofolate, which is involved in the remethylation of homocysteine to methionine [ 31 ], and SAM is converted to S-adenosyl-L-homocysteine (SAH), which is an inhibitor of methylation reactions ( Figure 2 ). Supplementing the diet of mothers with folate during the early stages of pregnancy protects against neural tube defects [ 89 ].…”

“…Medicinal plants have been used since ancient times to treat disease because of their wide range of pharmacological and bioactive properties. Numerous studies have shown that different nutritional compounds and bioproducts have significant modulatory effects on epigenetic apparatus [ 30 , 31 ], for example, in cancer and atherosclerosis. However, our understanding of epigenetic regulation by natural products in brain-related diseases remains limited.…”

Grape juice and aerobic exercise on blood pressure

“…As with exercise, some foods with functional claims have substances with distinct biological functions that are called bioactive components. These components are able to modulate the body’s physiology (Bautista-García et al , 2017). Through bioactive compounds, some foods and plants are effective in preventing and reducing some cardiovascular risk factors, such as hypercholesterolemia, hypertension, inflammation and vascular compliance (Cicero et al , 2017).…”