Therapeutic potential of natural products in oxidative and metabolic diseases

Oxidative and metabolic diseases represent a large proportion of global challenges to health and quality of life. These diseases are often characterised by the imbalance between the cellular prooxidant (products of metabolic processes) and the antioxidant molecules within the cells. The imbalance often led to the underlying factors that exacerbate the pathogenesis of some life-threatening diseases such as carcinogenesis, obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. Natural products, including phytochemicals and functional foods are known for their ability to affect metabolic processes such as ameliorating reactive oxygen species-induced mitochondria dysfunction, mitigating inflammatory response, and other cellular functions that could ameliorate the disease developments. Despite the relatively low toxicities of natural products as compared with synthetic products, further studies are still required to optimize the bioavailability, therapeutics, pharmaceutics, and clinical trials of natural products in patients suffering oxidative and metabolic diseases.

The treatment and management of metabolic disorders and metabolic syndromes including diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular diseases have been challenging due to the several adverse effects attributed to some synthetic drugs, lack of safety and high cost. As these disorders are exacerbated by oxidative and inflammatory stress, natural products including phytochemicals, functional foods and nutraceuticals with antioxidative and anti-inflammatory properties have now been increasingly utilized as complementary treatments. Natural products are naturally embedded with pharmacological activities useful for the prevention and treatment of various kinds of diseases. They are often utilized as starting points for drug discovery which can lead to the development of a new drug with improved efficacy and safety. Metabolic disorders are multifactorial, thus the use of natural products such as supplements may also be effective in the treatment of these diseases.

This Research Topic aims to provide a collection of quality original research articles that provides both experimental and clinical data on the potential therapeutic relevance of natural products, including phytochemicals and functional foods in the management of oxidative and metabolic diseases. It will further accommodate well-articulated review articles with original interpretations of existing knowledge to expose scientific gaps and provide new insight into the therapeutic prospects of phytochemicals and functional food in oxidative and metabolic disorders. The thematic areas will include the therapeutic relevance of natural products in the following subcategorized oxidative and/or metabolic disorders:

-Diabetes and obesity

-Cardiovascular diseases

-Oxidative stress and inflammation

The traditional use must be linked to scientific evidence. Importantly, this traditional use must be based on data from primary ethnobotanical or similar publications.

As you will see in our guidelines and in many other journals' guidelines, chemical anti-oxidant assays like the DPPH assay are of no pharmacological relevance, see also: http://cms.herbalgram.org/heg/volume15/01January/JournalsSkepticalofAssays.html. These are simply chemical tests / analytical tools and there is no evidence for therapeutic benefits on the basis of such chemical assays.

All the manuscripts submitted to the collection will need to fully comply with the Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology (you can freely download the full version here).). We also expect that the MS follow the standards established in the ConPhyMP statement Front. Pharmacol. 13:953205. ' A sufficiently detailed description of the botanical material and its chemical composition is essential as outlined in these documents.

Keywords: Phytochemicals, functional foods, oxidative stress, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases

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.