Spirulina phenolic compounds: natural food additives with antimicrobial properties

Abstract

Food safety is a scientific discipline to ensure consumers’ safety and prevent food-related harms, hazards, or risks along the entire food supply chain. Although fish and seafood products are the best means for securing food and nutrition in a population, they are also highly perishable, being vulnerable to pathogenic bacteria and fungi. This review thus aimed to provide updated scientific information on the role of the phenolic compounds of Spirulina as food additives, and their antimicrobial activities in fish and seafood products, in a food safety context. Recent applications of Spirulina phenolic compounds showed good results in contaminated fish and seafood products. Different studies have concluded that Spirulina phenolic compounds such as polyphenols, C-phycocyanin, γ-linolenic acid, fatty acids, and the combination of lauric and palmitoleic acids have antimicrobial activity in eliminating and/or controlling the growth of pathogenic bacteria such as Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Bacillus subtilis, and fungi such as Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus niger. Overall, Spirulina can be considered as an emerging natural food additive with antimicrobial activities against pathogenic fungi and bacteria.

Submerged and Solid-State Fermentation of Spirulina with Lactic Acid Bacteria Strains: Antimicrobial Properties and the Formation of Bioactive Compounds of Protein Origin

“…The LAB strain used for fermentation, as well as the interactions LAB × duration of fermentation, duration of fermentation × SMF-SSF, and LAB × duration of fermentation × SMF-SSF, had statistically significant effects on the diameter of the inhibition zone caused by Spirulina samples against Staphylococcus aureus (Supplementary File S3, Table S4). Data reported by some authors demonstrated that Spirulina polyphenols, alphalinolenic acid, C-phycocyanin and the combination of lauric and palmitoleic acids show antimicrobial properties against Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Bacillus subtilis, Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus niger [165]. Moreover, there are published data regarding the antimicrobial properties of Spirulina methanolic extract against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens [166].…”

Arthrospira platensis as future food: a review on functional ingredients, bioactivities and application in the food industry

“…(Muthusamy et al ., 2017). Likewise, other research data showed that the phycocyanin, polyphenols and γ‐linolenic acid in Arthrospira have an inhibitory effect on Escherichia coli , Bacillus subtilis and Aspergillus flavus (Metekia et al ., 2021). Arthrospira platensis with Lacticaseibacillus paracasei , Levilactobacillus brevis , Leuconostoc mesenteroides and Liquorilactobacillus uvarum in submerged and solid‐state fermentation have an inhibitory effect on Staphylococcus aureus (Tolpeznikaite et al ., 2023).…”

Health Benefits and Toxicity Potential of Phytochemical Food Additives

“…Figure 7 provides a summary of the biological activities of the polyphenols. Phenolic compounds can be extracted from natural sources such as olives, grapes, fruits, vegetables, rice, spices, herbs, tea, and algae [18]. These compounds are increasingly popular among consumers due to the fact that they come from natural sources and because they have health biological activities.…”

“…The antimicrobial activities of phenolic compounds are essential for various food preservation applications. Therefore, different kinds of food products can be fortified with phenolic compounds to improve their shelf life [18].…”