Cardioprotective Natural Products: Promises and Hopes - Brahmachari G.
Год выпуска: 2018Автор: Brahmachari G.
Жанр: Кардиология
Формат: PDF
Качество: OCR
Описание: This single volume entitled Cardioprotective Natural Products: Promises and Hopes is an endeavor to offer an account on the recent cutting-edge research advances in the field of bioactive natural products with cardioprotective potential against various cardiovascular diseases/disorders, particularly focusing on their clinical aspects and mode of action, and also to underline how natural product research continues to make significant contributions in the domain of discovery and development of new medicinal entities. This book consists of a total of nine chapters contributed by eminent researchers from several countries in response to my personal invitation. I am most grateful to the contributors for their generous and timely response in spite of their busy and tight schedules with academics, research, and other responsibilities.
Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), a class of diseases that involve the heart or blood vessels, are preeminent health problems worldwide and currently the leading cause of death and illness. According to the American Heart Association (AHA), cardiovascular diseases are responsible for nearly 17.5 million deaths per year worldwide accounting for 31% in 2012; however, due to worldwide consciousness in handling these deadly diseases has improved the cardiovascular health score by 5 percent for children and 2.9 percent for adults, resulting in an overall improvement of 3.5 percent as per the latest (2015-2016) data available with AHA. Still we need to focus on the possible preventions against CVDs and their remedies in a dedicated manner to reduce the projected data of human mortality of 23.5 million by 2030 out of these diseases worldwide. As mentioned CVDs describe a wide range of heart and blood vessel diseases that include ischemic heart disease, stroke, hypertensive heart diseases, rheumatic heart diseases, cardiomyopathy, atrial fibrillation, congenital heart diseases and peripherial artery diseases (PAD), and compromise the pumping ability of the heart, cause failure of the valves, or result in narrowing or hardening of the arteries. In modern times, the ischemic heart diseases including acute myocardial infarction, caused due to lack of blood flow to the heart, are the most alarming. The contributing factors for the growing burden of CVDs involve increase in the prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors, especially hypertension, dyslipidemia, diabetes, obesity, physical inactivity and use of tobacco. In addition, many toxins, infectious agents as well as some drugs, especially anthracyclines may damage the heart and blood vessels.
Cardioprotection usually refers to the prevention of coronary heart disease and the clinical improvement in patients suffering from cardiovascular problems. It includes "all mechanisms and means that contribute to the preservation of the heart by reducing or even preventing myocardial damage". It has been evidenced that natural products play a vital role in the cardioprotection and improving related health problems in the recent past. There is now a considerable interest in bioactive compounds present in edible plants and thus in "letting your food be your medicine', as recommended by Hippocrates. Beyond inpidual natural molecules, the recent expansion and the growing popularity of functional foods and nutraceuticals aimed to promote cardiac health are of promise. Nutraceuticals are natural bioactive chemical compounds common in bioactive foods as products supplied from nutrition industries. They have value in health promoting, disease preventing or semi-medicinal properties. Broadly cardioprotective nutraceuticals are polyunsaturated fatty acids (e.g. omega-3 fatty acids), antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and dietary fibers, and they promise substantial therapeutic value in cardioprotection. Most of the nutraceuticals act as biochemical metabolites by direct intervention in intermediary lipid metabolism or regulating proteins of vascular system responsible of 'cardiovascular incapability'.
Nature stands as an inexhaustible source of novel chemotypes and phar-macophores; natural products present in the plant and animal kingdom offer a huge persity of chemical structures which are the result of biosyn-thetic processes that have been modulated over the millennia through genetic efforts. Natural products continue to provide useful drugs in their own right and also provide templates for the development of other useful compounds. A major advantage of natural products approach to drug delivery is that it is capable of providing complex molecules that is not accessible by other routes. Substances derived from natural products have been utilized since the beginning of time for various purposes including the treatment of cardiovascular disorders. Plant secondary metabolites include an array of bioactive constituents form both medicinal and food plants able to improve human health. The exposure to these phytochemicals, including phenylpropanoids, isoprenoids and alkaloids, through proper dietary habits, may promote health benefits, protecting against CVDs. Recently, it has been suggested that drug discovery should not always be limited to discovery of a single molecule and the current belief is that rationally designed polyherbal formulation could also be investigated as an alternative in multitarget therapeutics and prophylaxis. Development of standardized, safe and effective herbal formulation with proven scientific evidence can also provide an economical alternative in several disease areas.
It is regarded that herbal medicine may represent a valuable resource in prevention rather than in therapy of some CVD diseases, in association with a healthy lifestyle including beneficial dietary habits and moderate physical activity. Nutritional therapy is a healing system using functional foods and nutraceuticals as therapeutics. This complementary therapy is based on the assumption that food is not only a source of nutrients and energy, but can also provide health benefits. In particular, the reported health-promoting effects of plant foods and beverages can be ascribed to the numerous bioactive chemicals present in plant tissues and, consequently, occurring in foods. Consumed as part of a normal diet, plant foods are thus not only a source of nutrients and energy, but may additionally provide health benefits beyond basic nutritional functions, by virtue of their dietary therapeutics. Thus, cardioprevention appears to be an important target and strategy in overcoming the cardiovascular disorders! Prevention coupled with curing therapy for various cardiovascular diseases is of demanding importance in modern medicinal chemistry.
This book, which comprises a variety of nine chapters written by active researchers and leading experts working in the field of cardioprotective natural products, brings together an overview of current discoveries and trends in this remarkable field. Chapter 1 presents an overview of the book and summarizes the contents of the other chapters so as to offer glimpses of the subject matter covered to the readers before they go in for a detailed study. Chapters 2 through 9 are devoted to exploring the ongoing chemical, biological and pharmacological advances in naturally occurring cardiopro-tective agents with a focus on their clinical aspects and mode of action. This timely volume encourages interdisciplinary work among chemists, biologists, pharmacologists, botanists, and agronomists with an interest in bioactive natural products. It is also an outstanding source of information with regard to the industrial application of natural products for medicinal purposes. The broad interdisciplinary approach dealt with in this book would surely make the work much more interesting for scientists deeply engaged in the research and/or use of cardioprotective natural products.
Representation of facts and their discussions in each chapter are exhaustive, authoritative, and deeply informative; hence, the book would serve as a key reference for recent developments in the frontier research on cardioprotective natural products at the interface of chemistry and biology, and would also be of much utility to scientists working in this area. I would like to express my sincere thanks once again to all the contributors for the excellent reviews on the chemistry, biology and pharmacology of these medicinally promising agents. It is their participation that makes my effort to organize such a book possible. Their masterly accounts will surely provide the readers with a strong awareness of current cutting-edge research approaches being followed in some of the promising fields of biologically active natural products.
I would like express my sincere thanks to Dr. Bradley K. McConnell, College of Pharmacy, University of Houston, USA, for his keen interest in the manuscript and for writing the foreword to the book.
Finally, I would like to express my deep sense of appreciation to all of the editorial and publishing staff-members associated with World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., Singapore, for their keen interest in publishing the work and also for their all-round help so as to ensure that the highest standards of publication are maintained in bringing out the book.