Nowadays, medicinal herbs and their phytochemicals have emerged as a great therapeutic option for many disorders. However, poor bioavailability and selectivity might limit their clinical application. Therefore, bioavailability is considered a notable challenge to improve bio-efficacy in transporting dietary phytochemicals. Different methods have been proposed for generating effective carrier systems to enhance the bioavailability of phytochemicals. Among them, nano-vesicles have been introduced as promising candidates for the delivery of insoluble phytochemicals. Due to the easy preparation of the bilayer vesicles and their adaptability, they have been widely used and approved by the scientific literature. The first part of the review is focused on introducing phytosome technology as well as its applications, with emphasis on principles of formulations and characterization. The second part provides a wide overview of biological activities of commercial and non-commercial phytosomes, divided by systems and related pathologies. These results confirm the greater effectiveness of phytosomes, both in terms of biological activity or reduced dosage, highlighting curcumin and silymarin as the most formulated compounds. Finally, we describe the promising clinical and experimental findings regarding the applications of phytosomes. The conclusion of this study encourages the researchers to transfer their knowledge from laboratories to market, for a further development of these products.
BackgroundMultiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease that leads to myelin sheath destruction. Hypoxia‐inducible factor 1 (HIF‐1) has several roles in cells, such as inducing inflammation and angiogenesis. Recently, several lines of evidence have indicated the role of the hypoxia response and the HIF‐1 signaling pathway in an autoimmune disease such as MS. The present study aimed to evaluate the effects of HIF‐1α gene polymorphisms and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) (as a major target gene of HIF‐1α) gene polymorphism on MS susceptibility.MethodsIn total, 150 MS patients and 150 healthy age‐ and gender‐matched people as a control group participated in the present study. The polymerase chain reaction‐restriction fragment length polymorphism method was used for genotyping.ResultsThe results obtained showed that the CC genotype of the VEGF rs699947 polymorphism was significantly higher in the case group than in the control group (p = 0.004). Also, we showed a significant relationship between the VEGF rs699947 polymorphism and MS in a dominant inheritance model (p = 0.005). Regarding the VEGF rs699947 polymorphism allelic distribution, the C allele frequency was significantly higher in the control group than in the case group (71.3% versus 61%, respectively, p = 0.009) and decreased the MS susceptibility by 1.6‐fold (odds ratio = 1.6, 95% confidence interval = 1.2–2.2). There was no significant difference between the two groups with respect to HIF‐1α rs11549465 genotypic distribution. The HIF‐1α C111A polymorphism was non‐polymorphic in our study population, except in the case group where nine subjects carried the CA genotype.ConclusionsWe show a significant association between VEGF rs60047 polymorphism and MS susceptibility. However, our results do not show a significant association between MS and HIF‐1α polymorphisms.
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