Antioxidant, Immunomodulating, and Microbial-Modulating Activities of the Sustainable and Ecofriendly Spirulina

Hindawi Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity Volume 2017, Article ID 3247528, 14 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/3247528 Review Article Antioxidant, Immunomodulating, and Microbial-Modulating Activities of the Sustainable and Ecofriendly Spirulina Alberto Finamore,1 Maura Palmery,2 Sarra Bensehaila,3 and Ilaria Peluso1 1 Center of Nutrition, Council for Agricultural Research and Economics (CREA-NUT), Via Ardeatina 546, 00178 Rome, Italy Department of Physiology and Pharmacology “V. Erspamer”, “Sapienza” University of Rome, Rome, Italy 3 Laboratory of Natural and Local Bioresources, Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Hassiba Benbouali, 02000 Chlef, Algeria 2 Correspondence should be addressed to Ilaria Peluso; Received 8 September 2016; Revised 26 November 2016; Accepted 12 December 2016; Published 15 January 2017 Academic Editor: Giuseppe Cirillo Copyright © 2017 Alberto Finamore et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The highly nutritional and ecofriendly Spirulina (Arthrospira platensis) has hypolipidemic, hypoglycemic, and antihypertensive properties. Spirulina contains functional compounds, such as phenolics, phycocyanins, and polysaccharides, with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and immunostimulating effects. Studies conducted on Spirulina suggest that it is safe in healthy subjects, but attitude to eating probably affects the acceptability of Spirulina containing foods. Although the antioxidant effect of Spirulina is confirmed by the intervention studies, the concerted modulation of antioxidant and inflammatory responses, suggested by in vitro and animal studies, requires more confirmation in humans. Spirulina supplements seem to affect more effectively the innate immunity, promoting the activity of natural killer cells. The effects on cytokines and on lymphocytes’ proliferation depend on age, gender, and body weight differences. In this context, ageing and obesity are both associated with chronic low grade inflammation, immune impairment, and intestinal dysbiosis. Microbial-modulating activities have been reported in vitro, suggesting that the association of Spirulina and probiotics could represent a new strategy to improve the growth of beneficial intestinal microbiota. Although Spirulina might represent a functional food with potential beneficial effects on human health, the human interventions used only supplements. Therefore, the effect of food containing Spirulina should be evaluated in the future. 1. Introduction Spirulina (Arthrospira platensis) is a microscopic and filamentous cyanobacterium that has been suggested as a sustainable and ecofriendly microalga useful for bioremediation, nitrification, and carbon dioxide (CO2 ) fixation. In the context of the bioremediation, Spirulina is considered a candidate for the removal of toxicants, such as heavy metals [1–5] and phenol [6]. Besides, within microalgae and cyanobacteria Spirulina showed maximum biomass productivity with the highest CO2 fixation rate [7] and it has been suggested for the nitrification from urine in urban wastewaters [8]. The environmentally friendly Spirulina does not need fertile land, has a rapid growth, and takes less energy input and less water per kilogram than soya and corn proteins [9]. Due to its costeffective and high nutritional value Spirulina has been used as protein-rich animal feed for improving meat production and quality [10] and has been proposed as a sustainable approach to prevent Protein Energy Malnutrition (PEM) and Protein Energy Wasting (PEW) in humans [9]. On the other hand, Spirulina presents hypolipidemic [11], hypoglycemic [12], and antihypertensive [13] properties. Studies in rats suggested that Spirulina increases the lipoprotein lipase activity [14] and the pancreatic secretion of insulin [15]. The latter effect was observed also in mice treated with phycocyanin isolated from Spirulina and was accompanied by a decrease in cholesterol, triglycerides, and malondialdehyde (MDA) and by an increase in the serum total antioxidant capacity [16]. On the other hand, the oral administration of an antihypertensive peptide, purified by Spirulina and resistant to in vitro digestion by gastrointestinal proteases, decreased 2 both systolic (SBP) and diastolic (DBP) blood pressure in spontaneously hypertensive rats [17]. All these effects could be considered useful in the prevention of the metabolic syndrome. In fact, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), high serum triglyceride level, low serum high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol level, hypertension, and elevated fasting blood glucose are four of the five risk factors (three out of the five required) for the diagnosis of metabolic syndrome [18]. Metabolic syndrome is associated with subclinical low grade inflammation, oxidative stress, and intestinal dysbiosis and it has been suggested that the gut microbiota could be a target for nutraceuticals [18]. In this regard, in vitro antimicrobial activity [19–21] and the capacity to improve the growth of probiotics [22–24] have been reported for Spirulina. Furthermore, Spirulina contains many functional bioactive ingredients with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities, including phenolic phytochemicals [25, 26] and the phycobiliprotein C-phycocyanin [27]. We aimed to evaluate the possibility that Spirulina could be an antioxidant and immunomodulating functional food by reviewing the human evidences, after taking into account safety and acceptability aspects. 2. Functional Compounds of Spirulina Spirulina has high nutritional values due to its content in proteins, essential amino acids, minerals, essential fatty acids, vitamins, and liposoluble antioxidants (vitamin E and carotenoids) [28–38] (Table 1). Great attention has been given to Spirulina antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities in many animal species [16, 34, 38–50] that could not be explained only by Spirulina macro and micronutrient content (Table 1). It has been suggested that the antioxidant activity accounts for the protective role of Spirulina against the toxicity induced by carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) [40], by metals (arsenic, mercuric chloride, chromium, cadmium, and fluoride) [34, 41–44], by the insecticide deltamethrin in mice [39] and rats [45], and by the drugs tilmicosin (in mice) [46], gentamicin (in rats) [47], and erythromycin in Egyptian Baladi bucks (Capra hircus) [38]. Furthermore, antioxidant effects of Spirulina have been reported also in murine models of inflammation [48–50]. In rat models of experimental colitis (acetic-acid induced) [48] and arthritis (Freund’s adjuvant-induced [49] and collageninduced [50]) the antioxidant activity of Spirulina was associated with anti-inflammatory effects. Abdel-Daim et al. [39] recently observed a decrease of the (...truncated)