Apoptosis, also called programmed cell death, is a physiological process that causes a number of morphological and biochemical changes, occurring in the cell and leading to its death. Along with the processes of proliferation, differentiation and maturation, it is responsible for controlling the amount and types of cells, removing those that are unnecessary or dangerous for the organism. The most important enzymes involved in apoptosis are caspases, which hydrolyze the structural and functional proteins, ultimately leading to cell death. The caspases are synthesized in the cell as inactive zymogens and have to be activated in order to perform their functions. Two pathways lead to the activation of caspases: the extrinsic pathway associated with membrane receptors and their ligands, and the intrinsic pathway dependent on mitochondria. The central element in the mitochondrial pathway is a special protein complex, the apoptosome, which enables and facilitates the activation of procaspase 9. Apaf-1, cytochrome c and dATP/ATP are needed to form the apoptosome. Active apoptosomes arise only in response to apoptotic agents. There are many factors regulating apoptosome formation in physiological conditions. It was shown that disorders in apoptosome formation have great importance in the pathogenesis of cancer and the occurrence of resistance to chemotherapy. Therefore, research continues on finding compounds which are able to induce or inhibit the formation of the apoptosome. The results of this research will have great importance for the treatment of cancers or diseases resulting from an excessively prolonged process of apoptosis. In this paper the general characteristics of the apoptosome, its role and mechanism of formation are presented. Additional information is given on the regulation of its activity and on the role of disturbance of apoptosome activity in cancerogenesis and chemoresistance. Particular attention is paid to those compounds that are able to influence the formation and activation of the apoptosome, and may in future be interesting therapeutic tools.
Oral diseases affect a very large number of people, and the applied pharmacological methods of treatment and/or prevention have serious side effects. Therefore, it is necessary to search for new, safer methods of treatment. Natural bee products, such as honey, royal jelly, and bee venom, can be a promising alternative in the treatment of oral cavity bacterial infections. Thus, we performed an extensive literature search to find and summarize all articles about the antibacterial activity of honey, royal jelly, and bee venom. Our analysis showed that these bee products have strong activity against the bacterial strains causing caries, periodontitis, gingivitis, pharyngitis, recurrent aphthous ulcers, supragingival, and subgingival plaque. An analysis of average MIC values showed that honey and royal jelly have the highest antimicrobial activity against Porphyromonas gingivalis and Fusobacterium nucleatum. In turn, bee venom has an antibacterial effect against Streptococcus mutans. Streptococcus sobrinus and Streptoccus pyogenes were the most resistant species to different types of honey, and royal jelly, respectively. Moreover, these products are safer in comparison to the chemical compounds used in the treatment of oral cavity bacterial infections. Since the antimicrobial activity of bee products depends on their chemical composition, more research is needed to standardize the composition of these compounds before they could be used in the treatment of oral cavity bacterial infections.
The up-to-date records show that approximately 10% of people worldwide suffer from periodontal diseases and about 50% of adults have some sort of moderate oral cavity disease. Therefore, oral cavity diseases represent the group of the most common chronic inflammatory diseases in the world. Thus, novel, natural, safe, and effective methods of treatment need to be found. In this study, a systematic search was performed in PubMed and Google Scholar up to March 2022 to select research evaluating the activity of propolis against bacteria responsible for oral cavity diseases. Peer-reviewed journals in English containing information about the in vitro and in vivo studies were included in our research. We excluded the records without access, written in another language than English, thesis or book chapters, and review papers, and we rejected the texts when the authors did not write about the antibacterial activity. Collected results of the inhibition zone as well as average MIC and MBC values indicated that propolis exhibits antimicrobial activity against the strains of bacteria which cause, e.g., periodontitis, gingivitis, caries, subgingival plaque, supragingival plaque, recurrent aphthous ulcers (RAS), and pharyngitis. However, before propolis can be commonly used, more research is needed to fully understand its composition and antibacterial mechanism of action.
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