Pharmacology and Nutritional Intervention in the Treatment of Disease

Abstract

Pharmacology and Nutritional Intervention in the Treatment of Disease covers topics of fundamental importance in biomedicine, basic principles of nutrition and pharmacology, health and disease research, as well as in basic biological research. While pharmacology is the science of drug action on biological systems, the nutritional aspect deals with general nutrition concepts with a focus on health promotion and therapeutic nutrition.Food and nutrition play an intimate and inextricable role in all aspects of drug metabolism, comprising, among others, safety and effectiveness. The importance of food and nutrition in the bioavailability of drugs, and vice versa, has been an area of historical interest. In spite of many synthetic compounds, the most efficient drugs available are directly or indirectly related to the plant kingdom. Many plant extracts have been shown to possess pharmacological actions. There is also accumulating evidence that the pharmacological actions, i.e. drug metabolism, distribution and effectiveness, depend on the nutritional status of a person. Natural products are a constant source of potentially active compounds for the treatment of various disorders. Natural products have, however, been largely replaced by synthetic drugs during the last century. However, the adverse side-effects and poor tolerability of many of these drugs have led to the investigation of the efficacy of dietary therapies for several disorders. For example, there is a body of evidence suggesting that metabolism-based therapy could often be considered as the initial treatment plan for patients with specific epilepsy syndromes.Nutrient-based or natural therapies are gaining popularity for many reasons. People are becoming aware of health-related information and are ready to consider disease prevention and treatments that are less intrusive than conventional allopathic medicine. Natural alternative treatments can provide an opportunity to treat a condition with a first round protocol that is less harmful for natural cell chemistry than the treatment with hard-core synthetic pharmacology. The alternative treatments are based on natural pharmacological activity as well as on cofactor activity that acts as a passive building block. Furthermore, complementary treatments have become popular because nutrigenomic science has helped us to learn more about the natural pharmacology of these remedies. This insight has allowed us to determine the activity of these natural biomedical treatments in relation to that of pharmaceutical drugs; providing reliable science-based information for safe alternative natural choices that can be applied as a first round treatment with reduced risk for side-effects. Nutrigenomic science has also allowed veterinary and human health care professionals to apply confidently complementary medicine to treat patients with natural and conventional drugs in powerful synergy. Many herbal, vitamin, antioxidant and mineral compounds have pharmacological activity similar to that of drugs and are thus able to synergize...