earticle

영어

Hundreds of phytochemicals have been studied for their different bioactivities. Many different phytochemicals in different chemical groups such as flavonoids, polyphenols, terpenes, sulfur compounds, and others exert numerous different physiological activities including antioxidant, antifungal, antivirus, and preventing cardiovascular diseases, cancer, osteoporosis, inflammation, hypertension, and thrombosis. Cancer is the disease that ranks the first in death rate in most of the countries in the world. The death rate of heart disease decreased to about half level during the last five decades, but that of the cancer have remained almost same during the same period although so many health programs and research works have been concentrated to deal with this disease. A lot of different components of food can contribute to the chemoprevention in the multistage carcinogenesis, and modes of action of these components are quite diverse. Mechanism of action includes supressing oxidative stress, inflammation, inhibition of cell to cell communication, cell proliferation, and matrix metalloproteinases.
Phytochemicals are involved in different levels of signal pathways.
Phytochemicals such as genistein, quercitin, resveratrol, vitamins, and phnolic compounds may suppress either ligand binding to receptors, activation of protein kinases, generation of intracellular hydrogen peroxide, or down regulate the oncogenes, and transcription factors, or down-stream processes including inflammation, cell communication, and metastasis.