Nutraceuticals: New Perspectives and Approaches in Human Health and Disease

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Background

A nutraceutical is defined as “a food (or a part of food) that provides medical or health benefits, including the prevention and/or treatment of a disease”. The term is applied to all components, or active ingredients, derived from foods of animal, vegetable or microbial origin, such as milk proteins, herbal products, phytochemicals and probiotics, that, other than nutrition, exhibit beneficial effects for human health. Recently, the interest for nutraceuticals is growing as most of them possess multiple therapeutic properties, including anti-microbial, anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer ones. Importantly, these products are usually recognized as “safe” and less likely to exert side effects.

Most nutraceutical intake occurs orally, and bioavailability varies greatly depending on several factors, such as physico-chemical properties, pH resistance and absorption rate. One of the main challenges for nutraceutical research relies on the effort to maximize both source quality and body delivery. Indeed, in the last decades, the optimization of nutraceutical formulations has greatly implemented the manufacturing and marketing in both pharmaceutical and food industry. On the other hand, food products for nutritional purposes are not regulated like licensed medicines and scientific research is often misinterpreted or overstretched for commercial interests. Therefore, it is imperative to re-evaluate basic research, concerning structure-function relationship, molecular interactions, activation/inhibition of cellular signalling, to reveal the actual (in)efficacy of such products on human health and disease. Such findings will disclose the potential of next-generation nutraceuticals as actual alternative or complement to standard pharmacological therapy.

The present Research Topic welcomes novel and promising research studies in nutraceutical field. Areas to be covered in this Research Topic may include, but are not limited to:

Identification of novel biologically active food components potentially capable of improving the physical and mental well-being and preventing or treating serious diseases;

Structural and functional characterization of novel nutraceuticals with impact for human health;

Interaction between nutraceutical and other food components in the context of human health;

Development of new engineering and technologies aimed to improve bioavailability and to provide nutraceuticals to the organism in an active form;

Development or optimization of nutraceutical formulations of natural or synthetic origin, safe and effective in pathological contests;

In vitro and in vivo studies describing the benefits/adverse effects of nutraceuticals with related underlying mechanisms.

Keywords: nutraceuticals, dietary supplements, herbal products, nutrients, milk proteins, phytochemicals, probiotics, prebiotics

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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