Bioactive Peptides Derived from Seaweed Protein and Their Health Benefits: Antihypertensive, Antioxidant, and Antidiabetic Properties

Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases and diabetes are the biggest causes of death globally. Therefore, prevention of these diseases is a focus of pharmaceuticals and functional food manufacturers. This review summarizes recent research trends and scientific knowledge in seaweed protein-derived peptides with particular emphasis on production, isolation and potential health impacts in prevention of hypertension, diabetes and oxidative stress. The current status and future prospects of bioactive peptides are also discussed. Bioactive peptides have strong potential for use in therapeutic drug and functional food formulation in health management strategy, especially cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Seaweeds can be used as sustainable protein sources in the production of these peptide-based drugs and functional foods for preventing such diseases. Many studies have reported that peptides showing angiotensin converting enzyme inhibition, antihypertensive, antioxidative and antidiabetics activities, have been successfully isolated from seaweed. However, further research is needed in large-scale production of these peptides, efficient isolation methods, interactions with functional foods and other pharmaceuticals, and their ease to digestion in in vivo studies and safety to validate the health benefits of these peptides.

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“…Analysis of Phytochemicals: Algae has a wide variety of natural pigments like chlorophyll, carotenoids and phycobiliproteins, which exhibit colors ranging from green, yellow, brown and red [39][40][41][42] . The results were corroborated with the previous reports.…”

Potential Role of Seaweed Polyphenols in Cardiovascular-Associated Disorders

“…The antihypertensive effect exerted by this alga was ascribed to its content in alginates, a polysaccharide that has shown preventive effects in experimental models of hypertension in rats, in addition to their beneficial impact on cholesterol and diabetes mellitus [35,36]. Several studies have described that bioactive peptides and protein hydrolysates from seaweeds have antihypertensive properties [6,37,38], such as those from Undaria pinnatifida [39,40,41], Palmaria palmata [42,43,44], Porphyra columbina [45,46], Porphyra yezoensis [47,48], among others. However, other bioactive compounds found in seaweeds can also contribute to the antihypertensive effect reported for these algae.…”

Effects of Compound Active Peptides on Protecting Liver and Intestinal Epithelial Cells from Damages and Preventing Hyperglycemia

“…Therefore, finding safe natural products to replace drugs for alleviating diabetes has become more and more important. It was reported that some active peptides are effective to alleviate diabetes [16][17][18]. Generally, the continuous generation of free radicals in diabetic patients directly leads to the complications of hyperglycemia in various organs due to cellular damage.…”

“…Therefore, if the oxidative system of the damaged cells is restored, it will contribute to attenuate the course of diabetes. The previous researches indicated that CAP had an antioxidant activity [6,17,19], so it is inferred that CAP may have benefits to alleviate diabetes. In order to explore the effective method for curing diabetes, the combined therapeutic effect of CAP and hypoglycemic drugs was also used in this study.…”