Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food" was expressed by Hippocrates more than 2000 years ago and the health benefits of natural food products have been considered for different goals since the ancient times. As natural phytochemicals, phenolic compounds (PCs) are a major class of semi-water-soluble compounds (from fruit and vegetable sources) with one or more benzene rings that are generally found in nature as glycosides. According to a review of the literature, food scientists have studied the many health benefits of these compounds against pernicious human diseases (HDs). Today, choosing a healthy diet has become an essential part of healthy living and fitness. Many studies have shown that people who follow a specific diet (especially polyphenol-rich diets) are at a low risk for a range of chronic diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, etc. The present research is a comprehensive review of studies on PCs with a focus on HDs that seeks to find out why some PCs have received such considerable attention all over the world. Data were collected from the Scopus database and a hierarchical cluster analysis was used with Ward's method to analyze the data. The results showed that three countries most involved in research on PCs are USA, China, and India, and also found that quercetin, catechin, and kaempferol are the three most studied PCs. Cardiovascular diseases, cancer, obesity, diabetes, and infectious diseases are the major treatment targets for PCs. The review of the literature showed that these compounds share a common molecular mode of action against HDs. The Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, Food Chemistry, PLOS ONE, and Planta Medica are also the most popular journals for covering original research on PCs. However, this study seeks to facilitate future studies on PCs through its findings.

The misfolding and aberrant assembly of peptides and proteins into fibrillar aggregates is the hallmark of many pathologies. Fibril formation is accompanied by oligomeric species thought to be the primary pathogenic agents in many of these diseases. With the aim of identifying the structural determinants responsible for the toxicity of misfolded oligomers, we created 12 oligomeric variants from the N-terminal domain of the E. coli HypF protein (HypF-N) by replacing one or more charged amino acid residues with neutral apolar residues and allowing the mutated proteins to aggregate under two sets of conditions. The resulting oligomeric species have different degrees of cytotoxicity when added to the extracellular medium of the cells, as assessed by the extent of 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) reduction, apoptosis, and influx of Ca2+ into the cells. The structural properties of the oligomeric variants were characterized by evaluating their surface hydrophobicity with 8-anilinonaphthalene-1-sulfonate (ANS) binding and by measuring their size by means of turbidimetry as well as light scattering. We find that increases in the surface hydrophobicity of the oligomers following mutation can promote the formation of larger assemblies and that the overall toxicity correlates with a combination of both surface hydrophobicity and size, with the most toxic oligomers having high hydrophobicity and small size. These results have allowed the relationships between these three parameters to be studied simultaneously and quantitatively, and have enabled the generation of an equation that is able to rationalize and even predict toxicity of the oligomers resulting from their surface hydrophobicity and size.

Recently, due to their biological properties, polyphenol-rich functional foods have been proposed to be unique supplementary and nutraceutical treatments for diabetes mellitus. Inhibition of α-amylase and α-glucosidase enzymes using natural products (especially polyphenols) is a novel oral policy to regulate carbohydrate metabolism and hyperglycemia. The present study aims to evaluate the α-amylase and α-glucosidase inhibitory activity of 26 polyphenols using molecular docking and virtual screening studies. The results speculate that among selected compounds caffeic acid, curcumin, cyanidin, daidzein, epicatechin, eridyctiol, ferulic acid, hesperetin, narenginin, pinoresinol, quercetin, resveratrol and syringic acid can significantly inhibit the α-glucosidase enzyme. In addition, catechin, hesperetin, kaempferol, silibinin and pelargonidin are potent α-amylase inhibitors. Therefore the primary structure of polyphenols can change the inhibitory effect versus the α-amylase and α-glucosidase enzymes. Finally, we speculate that consumption of polyphenol-rich functional foods (by considering the best dose of each compound and assessing their possible side effects) in diabetic patients may be useful for regulating carbohydrate metabolism and related disorders. The findings of the current study may also shed light on a way of generating a new class of amylase/glucosidase inhibitors that will discriminately inhibit the on-target enzymes with negligible undesired off-target side effects.

COVID-19 is a devastating global pandemic around the world. While the majority of infected cases appear mild, in some cases individuals present respiratory complications with possible serious lung damage. There are no specific treatments for COVID-19 as yet, though a number are under evaluation, including experimental antivirals. Sofosbuvir, the clinically approved anti-hepatitis C virus (HCV) drug, is also capable of suppressing other families of positive-strand RNA viruses; Flaviviridae and Togaviridae. Coronaviruses are a family of positive-strand RNA viruses with conserved polymerase, so SARS-CoV-2 RdRp is very likely to be effectively inhibited by sofosbuvir. More importantly, sofosbuvir is safe and well tolerated at 400 mg daily in a 24 week therapeutic regimen. Sofosbuvir active metabolite, however, shows an extremely high intracellular stability So, it is hypothesized that SARS-CoV-2 infection could also be susceptible to sofosbuvir and we were convinced to design and run a clinical trial to evaluate the effect of sofosbuvir 400 mg (in combination with velpatasvir 100 mg, as add-on treatment, in addition to standard of care) on the COVID-19. However, we believe that this manuscript/ correspondence should be made available to the international scientific community as soon as possible, with the help of this esteemed journal. Ó 2020 IMSS.

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Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease with an unknown aetiology that has been associated with abnormal plasma lipid metabolism and oxidative stress. There are controversial results in the previous studies investigating oxidant/antioxidant systems in psoriasis.The aim of this work was to evaluate the plasma levels of malondialdehyde (MDA), superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), total bilirubin (T. Bili), direct bilirubin (D. Bili), uric acid (UA), apolipoproteins (ApoA1 and ApoB), Lp(a) and activities of paraxonase 1 (PON1) in 100 patients with psoriasis and 100 controls, and to look for a correlation between these parameters in psoriasis.PON1, bilirubin and UA were measured spectrophotometrically, MDA by the high-performance liquid chromatography method, apolipoproteins and Lp(a) by immunoprecipitation assays, and lipid and other biochemical parameters were determined by routine laboratory methods.In patients with psoriasis, there was a significant decrease in PON1, SOD and CAT activities (P < 0.05) and an increase in MDA levels (P < 0.01). Also, the levels of bilirubin (total and direct) and UA were decreased in patients with psoriasis but were not significant (P > 0.05).These results suggest that psoriasis was in a state of oxidative stress and that the protective effects of high-density lipoprotein against atherosclerosis may be dependent on PON1 activity. Moreover, there is a negative correlation between antioxidant with Lp(a), apoB and MDA levels, suggesting that subjects with higher levels of Lp(a) and apoB and lower levels of antioxidant are more exposed to oxidative damage. These findings may explain in part the reported increase in cardiovascular mortality in psoriasis.