Propiedades nutraceúticas del licopeno: [revisión] / Nutraceutical properties of lycopene: [review]

Las recomendaciones dietarias en los últimos años proponen el incremento del consumo de alimentos que contienen fitoquímicos, ya que éstos proveen efectos benéficos para la salud humana y juegan un papel importante en la prevención de enfermedades crónicas. El licopeno, carotenoide responsable del color rojo de los tomates, ha atraído la atención debido a sus propiedades biológicas y fisicoquímicas en la prevención de enfermedades crónicas como cáncer, enfermedades cardiovasculares y neurodegenerativas, e hipertensión, entre otras, en las cuales el estrés oxidativo es un importante factor etiológico. Los antioxidantes, incluyendo al licopeno, interactúan con las especies reactivas del oxígeno, pudiendo mitigar el efecto dañino y jugar un papel significativo en la prevención de dichas enfermedades. Este artículo presenta una revisión de algunos estudios epidemiológicos realizados en los últimos años acerca de los efectos benéficos del licopeno en la salud humana.

In recent years, dietary recommendations have suggested an increase in the consumption of foods that contain phytochemicals that provide benefits to human health and play an important role in preventing chronic diseases. Lycopene -the carotenoid responsible for the red color of tomatoes-has attracted attention because of its physicochemical and biological properties in the prevention of chronic diseases in which oxidative stress is a major etiological factor, such as cancer, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases, and hypertension, among others. Antioxidants, including lycopene, interact with reactive oxygen species, can mitigate their damaging effects and play a significant role in preventing these diseases. This article presents a review of some epidemiological studies published in recent years on beneficial effects of lycopene in human health.

Pigmentos carotenoides: consideraciones estructurales y fisicoquímicas / Carotenoid pigments: structural and physicochemical considerations

Los pigmentos carotenoides constituyen un grupo de compuestos ubicuos en la naturaleza que realizan una serie de funciones que los hacen especiales. Así, son considerados compuestos indispensables para la vida, fundamentalmente debido a las diferentes funciones que llevan a cabo en relación con la fotosíntesis tal y como se conoce hoy en día. Durante muchos años, la importancia nutricional de los carotenoides se debió a que algunos de ellos poseen actividad provitamínica A, si bien el que el interés por estos isoprenoides se haya multiplicado en los últimos años se ha debido a una gran variedad de estudios que parecen indicar que actúan como antioxidantes y que podrían ser beneficiosos para la prevención de diversas enfermedades crónicas humanas no transmisibles, si bien existe todavía cierta controversia al respecto. En cualquier caso, las funciones y efectos debidos a estos pigmentos se deben a sus propiedades fisico-químicas y que éstas a su vez son consecuencia de su estructura química. Debido a las variadas acciones beneficiosas de las que son responsables, y sobre todo a su importancia nutricional, el objetivo fundamental de esta revisión es la descripción de dichas caracteríticas, cuyo conocimiento es indispensable para tener una visión global de los diferentes roles que desempeñan y para el diseño de nuevos estudios.

Carotenoid are ubiquitous compounds serving a series of functions that make them special. Thus, they are regarded as essential compounds for life mainly due to the different roles they perform in photosynthesis as we currently know it. For many years, the nutritional relevance ot carotenoids was due to some of them exhibiting vitamin A activity, although theinterest in these pigments has expanded dramatically in the last years owing to a large variety of surveys that seem to indicate that they are antioxidant and may be beneficial for the prevention of several chronic non-transmissible human diseases, albeit there is some controversy in this regard. In any case, it is clear that the different functions and effects attributed to these isoprenoids stem from their physical and chemical properties, the latter being due to their chemical structure. Due to the diverse benefitial actions carotenoids are responsible for and, above all, to their nutritional importance, the main objective of this review is to describe such features, whose knowledge is indispensable to have a holistic view of the different roles they play and for the design of new studies.

The effect of salinity on the growth and carotenogenesis in two Chilean strains of Dunaliella salina Teodoresco

We studied the effect of salt concentration on the growth and carotenogenesis in two Chilean strains of Dunaliella salina, CONC-006 and CONC-007, cultivated in two media of different chemical composition J/l and PES, under controlled laboratory conditions. Growth rates, k (div day-1), intrinsic production rates of total carotenoids per unit time rcar (day-1), maximum levels of total carotenoids, K (mg l-1), and maximum production of total carotenoids per unit time, rK/4 (micrograms l-1 day-1) were estimated from growth and carotenogenesis data. The highest maximum productivity of total carotenoids was 978 micrograms l-1 day-1 obtained in CONC-007 at 25 percent NaCl, and the lowest 15 micrograms l-1 day-1, in CONC-006 at 30 percent NaCl, both growing in PES medium. CONC-007 showed the highest growth rates, 0.76 and 0.65 div day-1, at the lowest salt concentration (5 percent) in PES and J/1, respectively. On the contrary, the strain CONC-006 exhibited a different growth pattern in both media. Its maximum growth rate in J/1 was 0.37 div day-1 at 20 percent NaCl, and in PES, 0.53 div day-1 at 5 percent NaCl. According to these results, the best integration of growth and carotenogenesis in CONC-007 was obtained at 15 percent NaCl in J/1 from 10 to 25 percent NaCl in PES and in CONC-006, from 5 to 20 percent NaCl in J/1 and from 5 to 10 percent NaCl in PES