Comparative Oral Absorption of Curcumin in a Natural Turmeric Matrix with Two Other Curcumin Formulations: An Open‐label Parallel‐arm Study

Abstract

Curcuminoids are the major bioactive molecules in turmeric, and poor bioavailability deters them from being the major components of many health and wellness applications. This study was conducted to assess the bioavailability of a completely natural turmeric matrix formulation (CNTMF) and compare its bioavailability with two other commercially available formulations, namely, curcumin with volatile oil (volatile oil formulation) and curcumin with phospholipids and cellulose (phospholipid formulation) in healthy human adult male subjects (15 each group) under fasting conditions. Each formulation was administrated orally as a single 500-mg dose in capsule form, and blood samples were analyzed by liquid chromatography mass spectrometry at various time intervals up to 24 h. The ingestion of the CNTMF was very well absorbed and resulted in a mean curcuminoids plasma C of 170.14 ng/mL (T = 4 h) compared with 47.54 ng/mL and 69.63 ng/mL for the volatile oil (T = 3 h) and phospholipid (T = 2.25 h) formulations, respectively. The extent of absorption of total curcuminoids in the blood for the CNTMF was 6× greater than volatile oil formulation and 5× greater than phospholipids formulation. The results of this study indicate that curcumin in a natural turmeric matrix exhibited greater bioavailability than the two comparator products. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Highly Bioavailable Forms of Curcumin and Promising Avenues for Curcumin-Based Research and Application: A Review

“…Curcumin is fat soluble, and therefore consuming curcumin with a fatty meal enhances absorption. Early approaches to enhancing absorption were the addition of turmeric oil (BCM-95 ® ; BioCurcumax ® ; Curcugreen™) [17][18][19][20], a small amount of piperine (Curcumin C 3 Complex ® ) [21][22][23] to stimulate the gastrointestinal system and prevent efflux of curcumin, or as a turmeric oleoresin (Curcugen™) which have resulted in small incremental increases in curcumin absorption.…”

“…Newer formulations have used adsorption and dispersion of curcumin onto various matrices as: γ-cyclodextrin (Cavacurmin ® ) [24]; whey-protein (CurcuminPro ® ); rice flour, stearic acid, silica and magnesium stearate (CurcuFresh™); microcrystalline cellulose combined with soy lecithin phosphatidylcholine (Meriva ® ) [18][19][20][24][25][26]; spray-dried on porous silicon dioxide combined with triacetin and Panodan ® (Micronized Curcumin) [27]; cellulosic derivatives complexed with a hydrophobic carrier and natural antioxidants (CurcuWIN ® ) [20]; and a natural turmeric matrix formulation composed of carbohydrates, proteins, fiber and volatile oil (Acumin ® /Cureit ® ) [19].…”

“…Due to large variations in administration, analytical techniques, dosage and other parameters, the AUCs and C MAX data are not directly comparable across studies and formulations. However, when data from various pharmacokinetic studies are compared by normalizing the results based on AUC/mg and CMAX/mg of ingested curcumin, meaningful comparisons can be made [15,19,51,52], and clearly indicate that micro-and nano-formulations Pharmacokinetic studies in human have administered curcumin with and without DMC and BDMC. However, few human studies have assessed DMC and BDMC, even when they were quantified (total but not free) following enzymatic hydrolysis of the conjugated forms [24][25][26][27]35].…”

Curcumin sensitized the antitumour effects of irradiation in promoting apoptosis of oesophageal squamous-cell carcinoma through NF-κB signalling pathway

“…Curcumin is a phyto‐polyphenolic pigment extracted from turmeric ( Curcuma longa ) . It has been widely used for therapeutic purpose histologically due to the intrinsic anti‐inflammatory, antioxidant and antitumour properties .…”

“…Curcumin is a phyto-polyphenolic pigment extracted from turmeric (Curcuma longa). [9,10] It has been widely used for therapeutic purpose histologically due to the intrinsic anti-inflammatory, [11,12] antioxidant [13] and antitumour properties. [14][15][16][17][18][19] The extensive investigations and exploitations have characterized the wide-spectrum anticancer activity of curcumin against variety of human tumours including ovarian, breast, colon and so forth.…”