Curcumin as an anti‐inflammatory agent: Implications to radiotherapy and chemotherapy

Abstract

Cancer is the second cause of death worldwide. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy are the most common modalities for the treatment of cancer. Experimental studies have shown that inflammation plays a central role in tumor resistance and the incidence of several side effects following both chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Inflammation resulting from radiotherapy and chemotherapy is responsible for adverse events such as dermatitis, mucositis, pneumonitis, fibrosis, and bone marrow toxicity. Chronic inflammation may also lead to the development of second cancer during years after treatment. A number of anti-inflammatory drugs such as nonsteroidal antiinflammatory agents have been proposed to alleviate chronic inflammatory reactions after radiotherapy or chemotherapy. Curcumin is a well-documented herbal antiinflammatory agents. Studies have proposed that curcumin can help management of inflammation during and after radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Curcumin targets various inflammatory mediators such as cyclooxygenase-2, inducible nitric oxide synthase, and nuclear factor κB (NF-κB), thereby attenuating the release of proinflammatory and profibrotic cytokines, and suppressing chronic production of free radicals, which culminates in the amelioration of tissue toxicity. Through modulation of NF-κB and its downstream signaling cascade, curcumin can also reduce angiogenesis, tumor growth, and metastasis. Low toxicity of curcumin is linked to its cytoprotective effects in normal tissues. This protective action along with the capacity of this phytochemical to sensitize tumor cells to radiotherapy and chemotherapy makes it a potential candidate for use as an adjuvant in cancer therapy. There is also evidence from clinical trials suggesting the potential utility of curcumin for acute inflammatory reactions during radiotherapy such as dermatitis and mucositis. K E Y W O R D S cancer, chemotherapy, curcumin, inflammation, radiotherapy J Cell Physiol. 2019;234:5728-5740. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jcp 5728 |

Preparation of Poloxamer188-b-PCL and Study on in vitro Radioprotection Activity of Curcumin-Loaded Nanoparticles

“…Furthermore, CUR has broad clinical application, i.e., antioxidant activity (Esatbeyoglu et al, 2015;Llano et al, 2019;Wang et al, 2019), anti-tumor (Ohtsu et al, 2002;Kunnumakkara et al, 2007;Yan et al, 2017), anti-inflammatory (Aggarwal and Harikumar, 2009;Fadus et al, 2017;Hussain et al, 2017), and anti-hyperlipidemia (Huang et al, 2018;Panahi et al, 2018;Wang et al, 2018), and so on. In particular, bioactivities of curcumin as an effective chemopreventive agent, chemo-/radio-sensitizer for tumor cells, and chemo-/radio-protector for normal organs, are of extraordinary research interests in the literature (Farhood et al, 2018).…”

Herbs and Spices in the Treatment of Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders: A Review of Clinical Trials

“…The active component is curcumin, a diferulolymethane which is responsible for the yellow color of the turmeric and which is often used to color foods and cosmetics. Tumeric has been widely studied for its medicinal properties, especially as an anti-inflammatory agent [ 30 ]. Supplementing the diet with curcuminoids has been shown to lower CRP levels to downregulate and inhibit inflammatory mediators such cycloxygenase 2 and TNF ∝, a significant mediator of inflammation [ 31 ].…”

“…Supplementing the diet with curcuminoids has been shown to lower CRP levels to downregulate and inhibit inflammatory mediators such cycloxygenase 2 and TNF ∝, a significant mediator of inflammation [ 31 ]. Thus, it has been used in the treatment of various inflammatory conditions such as cancer, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), neurodegenerative diseases, diabetes, obesity, and atherosclerosis, with success in both animal studies and human clinical trials [ 30 ]. The pathophysiology of FAPDs are not completely understood and some of the proposed mechanisms include low grade inflammation of gut mucosa, which may potentiate some of the symptoms [ 32 ].…”

Therapeutic effects of kaempferol affecting autophagy and endoplasmic reticulum stress

“…The history of traditional herb medicine dates back to a long time ago, however, during the recent decades owing to the considerable positive impacts of herbals (Aliasgharzadeh et al, ; Farhood et al, ; Mortezaee et al, ; Najafi et al, ; Shabeeb et al, ) and noticeable side effects of chemical drugs, much attention has been made in pharmacognosy (Farhood et al, , , , ; Najafi et al, ). In other words, the harmful effects of synthetic drugs lead to the substitution of natural compounds for the remediation of a number of disorders (Azmoonfar et al, ; Farhood et al, ; Kolivand et al, ; Shabeeb et al, ).…”