Anti-Obesity Effects of Macroalgae

Abstract

Macroalgae have attracted great interest for their potential applications in nutraceutical and pharmaceutical industries as source of bioactive medicinal products and food ingredients. This review gathers data from in vitro and in vivo studies addressing the anti-obesity effects of macroalgae. Great consensus exists in all reported in vitro studies concerning the reduction induced by seaweed extracts in the expression of transcriptional factors controlling adipogenesis. In animals, macroalgae reduced body fat accumulation and prevented other obesity features, such as dyslipidemia, insulin resistance and fatty liver. These effects are not due to food intake reduction, since few studies have reported such event. Indeed, the effects on metabolic pathways in target tissues/organs seem to play a more relevant role. Macroalgae can reduce de novo lipogenesis, limiting fatty acid availability for triglyceride synthesis in white adipose tissue. This effect has been observed in both cell cultures and adipose tissue from animals treated with macroalgae extracts. In addition, increased fatty acid oxidation and thermogenic capacity, as well as a shift towards healthier gut microbiota composition may contribute to the body fat-lowering effect of macroalgae. Studies in humans are needed to determine whether macroalgae can represent a feasible tool to prevent and/or manage overweight and obesity.

Bioactive Compounds, Cosmeceutical And Nutraceutical Applications of Green Seaweed Species (Chlorophyta)

“…A study done on 6-week-old male C57BL/6J mice exhibited a significantly lower body weight when supplemented with 250 mg/kg body weight of C. okamurae group compared to a mouse fed with high fat diet (HFD) alone. It was observed that the weight of epididymal and perirenal adipose and the total fat of the mouse were decreased when fed with C. okamurae diet (Gómez-Zorita et al, 2020). Given these studies, it can be deduced that C. okamurae extract has the potential to prevent obesity.…”

“…Given these studies, it can be deduced that C. okamurae extract has the potential to prevent obesity. This is because C. okamurae supplementation reduced the protein expressions of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma (PPAR) and CCAAT/enhancerbinding protein alpha (C/EBP) that increased due to the HFD (Gómez-Zorita et al, 2020). Similarly, Sharma, Kim, Kim, Park, and Rhyu (2017) also highlighted the anti-obesity effect demonstrated by C. okamurae extracts.…”

Applying Seaweed Compounds in Cosmetics, Cosmeceuticals and Nutricosmetics

“…Several biological properties have been associated with lipids [211,215]. Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) can benefit skin barrier protection and other biological functions can be enhanced; nutricosmetics could contribute an anti-obesity effect [211,216,217] and the regulation of inflammatory responses [25,218]. Being structural components of cell membranes, sterols regulate membrane fluidity and permeability and other properties, such as antioxidant, antiproliferative, and anti-photodamage, and antiinflammatory effects have been reported for fucosterol [28,188,[219][220][221]].…”

Functional Features of Alginates Recovered from Himanthalia elongata Using Subcritical Water Extraction

“…Macroalgae metabolites have an important role because some of them can display positive effects on human health [ 10 ]. Anti-inflammatory, antitumoral, anticoagulant, antioxidant, anti-obesity and other biological properties have been associated with these macroalgae metabolites in recent research [ 5 , 11 ].…”