Bioactive metabolites in functional and fermented foods and their role as immunity booster and anti-viral innate mechanisms

J Food Sci Technol https://doi.org/10.1007/s13197-022-05528-8 REVIEW ARTICLE Bioactive metabolites in functional and fermented foods and their role as immunity booster and anti‑viral innate mechanisms Kontham Kulangara Varsha1 · Vivek Narisetty2 · Kamalpreet Kaur Brar3,4 · Aravind Madhavan5 · Maria Paul Alphy6,7 · Raveendran Sindhu8 · Mukesh Kumar Awasthi9 · Sunita Varjani10 · Parameswaran Binod6,7 Revised: 19 April 2022 / Accepted: 18 May 2022 © Association of Food Scientists & Technologists (India) 2022 Abstract Live microorganisms in the fermented foods termed probiotics and their secondary metabolites with bioactive potential were considered as potential anti-viral capabilities through various mechanisms. Given the importance of functional and fermented foods in disease prevention, there is a need to discuss the contextualization and deep understanding of the mechanism of action of these foods, particularly considering the appearance of coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which is causing health concerns and increased social services globally. The mechanism of probiotic strains or their bioactive metabolites is due to stimulation of immune response through boosting T-lymphocytes, cytokines, and cell toxicity of natural killer cells. Proper consumption of these functional and fermented Kontham Kulangara Varsha and Vivek Narisetty these authors contributed equally and Co-first authors. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/ s13197-022-05528-8. 2 3 Keywords Anti-viral metabolites · Immunity · Fermented foods · COVID-19 · Functional foods Introduction The process of fermentation has long been used to increase the shelf life, flavour and functional properties of food. In addition to help food last longer, fermentation increases the nutritional value, and the probiotic bacteria present in fermented food confer health benefits that comprise reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases by decreasing total and LDL cholesterol (Marco et al. 2017). Multiple clinical trials investigated the advantages of fermented food and exposed the ability of kimchi and yogurt to downsize the risk of type 2 diabetes (Chen et al. 2014), Chungkookjang to decrease obesity (Byun et al. 2016), 6 School of Medicine, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29209, USA Microbial Processes and Technology Division, CSIR-National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology, Trivandrum, Kerala 695 019, India 7 Moolec Science, Innovation Centre, Gallows Hill, CV34 6UW, Warwick, UK Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad 201002, India 8 Department of Civil Engineering, Lassonde School of Engineering, York University, North York, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada Department of Food Technology, T K M Institute of Technology, Kollam, Kerala 691505, India 9 College of Natural Resources and Environment, Northwest A & F University, Yangling 712 100, Shaanxi, China 10 Gujarat Pollution Control Board, Paryavaran Bhavan, CHH Road, Sector 10 A, Gujarat, Gandhinagar 382010, India * Parameswaran Binod 1 foods may provide additional antiviral approaches for public benefit by modulating the immune functions in the hosts. 4 Centre Technologique des Résidus Industriels en Abitibi Témiscamingue, 433 Boulevard du collège, J9X0E1, Rouyn‑Noranda, Canada 5 Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology, Thiruvananthapuram 695 014, India 13 Vol.:(0123456789) J Food Sci Technol and the capacity of fermented milk and rye bread to control infection and irritable bowel syndrome (Laatikainen et al. 2016). Among this health promoting and infectivity demoting effects include the antiviral activity of certain fermented foods owing to the presence of live bacteria in it, and the examples are Chr. Hansen (http://www.chr-hansen. com/); Kingdom Supercultures (https://kingdomsupercul tures.com/); Probitat (http://www.probitat.eu/); 3FBIO Ltd (ENOUGH) (https://www.enough-food.com/); Fermbiotics (https://www.fermbiotics.com/). Functional foods (FFs) are distinguished by their nutraceuticals. Nutraceuticals are either whole foods or food ingredients that provide health benefits, such as disease prevention and/or treatment. This is generally associated with their microvascular, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidation properties in highly affected individuals. Active FFs are rich in polyphenols, terpenoids, flavonoids, and unsaturated fatty acids ingredients are among the widely active functional foods to be consumed (Alkhatib et al. 2018). Recently, Acquah et al. (2020) reported that some bioactive peptides presented many similar hormonal and neurological activities of human system (Acquah et al. 2020). On the other side, fermented food products contain probiotics (García-Burgos et al. 2020). Probiotics are “live microorganisms which when administered in adequate amounts confer a health benefit on the host”. Covid19 was observed to be a severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) which is named as SARS corona virus 2 or SARS-CoV-2 (Lai et al. 2020). Broadly, coronaviruses are large and enveloped mainly found in humans and mammals and known to cause respiratory, gastrointestinal, and neurological disease. Through genetic recombination and mutation, corona viruses can be more infectious. Stringent measures were taken by various countries based on their resource limitations, geography, population, and political factors. Although these severe interventions, since Feb. 2020 and as of March 17, 2022, the outbreak has infected almost 464 million people and killed over 6.06 million. Previous studies have shown that 65% of airborne MERSCoV virus remains viable in the air and infectious after 60 min (Pyankov et al. 2018). The presence of SARSCoV-2 in hospitals and entrance to department stores in Wuhan, China (Liu et al. 2020), air outlet fans in a COVID-19 outbreak center in Singapore (Ong et al. 2020) and hospital isolation rooms in Nebraska (Santarpia et al. 2020) were observed. Recently, some preliminarily results have shown that the virus can survive up to 3 h as aerosol and infect cells throughout this period (van Doremalen et al. 2020). A ferret model of SARS-CoV-2 infection that reiterates aspects of human disease has also confirmed the potential of virus airborne transmission (Kim et al. 2020). A recent study reported that SARS-CoV-2 can be viable for 4 h on copper, 24 h on cardboard, 2–3 days on 13 plastic and stainless steel (Guo et al. 2020). Generally, SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted via respiratory pathways, but they may spread via multiple dominant routes. An acceptor individual must receive an infectious dose of the virus from a donor, either directly through the air or indirectly through deposits of the virus on various surfaces. Molecular based detection techniques, like plaque assay, Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA), Lateral-Flow (immuno) Assay (LFA), Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) (...truncated)