Bee Pollen: Current Status and Therapeutic Potential (original) (raw)
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Bee Pollen as Functional Food: Insights into Its Composition and Therapeutic Properties
Antioxidants
Bee pollen is a hive product made up of flower pollen grains, nectar, and bee salivary secretions that beekeepers can collect without damaging the hive. Bee pollen, also called bee-collected pollen, contains a wide range of nutritious elements, including proteins, carbs, lipids, and dietary fibers, as well as bioactive micronutrients including vitamins, minerals, phenolic, and volatile compounds. Because of this composition of high quality, this product has been gaining prominence as a functional food, and studies have been conducted to show and establish its therapeutic potential for medical and food applications. In this context, this work aimed to provide a meticulous summary of the most relevant data about bee pollen, its composition—especially the phenolic compounds—and its biological and/or therapeutic properties as well as the involved molecular pathways.
Bee pollen properties: uses and potential pharmacological applications-a review
Journal of Analytical & Pharmaceutical Research, 2018
Bee pollen is a food supplement widely used in the world due to the benefits promoted by the bioactive compounds present in it. In addition to the very attractive nutritional composition, the presence of phenolics, flavonoids, terpenes are responsible for the antioxidant activity, antimicrobial, antiinflammatory, possible action on benign prostatic hyperplasia, no cytotoxic. It is intended to show with this article the uses and potential of bee pollen application. Numerous studies are aimed at identifying these compounds in pollen samples around the world, because according to the region, climatic type, seasons, shift and bee species, the composition is influenced by the variety. The use of pollen is more recurrent in the food industry are comprehensively summarized in this review, but the biomedical could also take advantage of the potential that this product demonstrates.
Bee Collected Pollen and Bee Bread: Bioactive Constituents and Health Benefits
Antioxidants, 2019
Bee products were historically used as a therapheutic approach and in food consumption, while more recent data include important details that could validate them as food supplements due to their bioproperties, which support their future use as medicines. In this review data, data collected from bee pollen (BP) and bee bread (BB) essays will be discussed and detailed for their nutritional and health protective properties as functional foods. Dietary antioxidants intake derived from BP and BB have been associated with the prevention and clinical treatment of multiple diseases. The beneficial effects of BP and BB on health result from the presence of multiple polyphenols which possess anti-inflammatory properties, phytosterols and fatty acids, which play anticancerogenic roles, as well as polysaccharides, which stimulate immunological activity. From the main bioactivity studies with BP and BB, in vitro studies and animal experiments, the stimulation of apoptosis and the inhibition of c...
Bee Pollen: Chemical Composition and Therapeutic Application
Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2015
Bee pollen is a valuable apitherapeutic product greatly appreciated by the natural medicine because of its potential medical and nutritional applications. It demonstrates a series of actions such as antifungal, antimicrobial, antiviral, anti-inflammatory, hepatoprotective, anticancer immunostimulating, and local analgesic. Its radical scavenging potential has also been reported. Beneficial properties of bee pollen and the validity for their therapeutic use in various pathological condition have been discussed in this study and with the currently known mechanisms, by which bee pollen modulates burn wound healing process.
Nutrients
The emphasis on healthy nutrition is gaining a forefront place in current biomedical sciences. Nutritional deficiencies and imbalances have been widely demonstrated to be involved in the genesis and development of many world-scale public health burdens, such as metabolic and cardiovascular diseases. In recent years, bee pollen is emerging as a scientifically validated candidate, which can help diminish conditions through nutritional interventions. This matrix is being extensively studied, and has proven to be a very rich and well-balanced nutrient pool. In this work, we reviewed the available evidence on the interest in bee pollen as a nutrient source. We mainly focused on bee pollen richness in nutrients and its possible roles in the main pathophysiological processes that are directly linked to nutritional imbalances. This scoping review analyzed scientific works published in the last four years, focusing on the clearest inferences and perspectives to translate cumulated experiment...
Food and Chemical Toxicology, 2014
Bee pollen is considered, since memorable times, a good source of nourishing substances and energy. The present study aimed to evaluate the biological activities of eight commercial bee pollens purchased from the market. The origin of sample A was not specified in the labeling; samples B, C, D and G were from Portugal and the remaining were from Spain. The sample E presented the highest value of phenolics (32.15 ± 2.12 mg/g) and the H the lowest (18.55 ± 095 mg/g). Sample C had the highest value of flavonoids (10.14 ± 1.57 mg/g) and sample H the lowest (3.92 ± 0.68 mg/g). All the samples exhibited antimicrobial activity, being Staphylococcus aureus the most sensitive and Candida glabrata the most resistant of the microorganisms studied. All the samples exhibited antimutagenic activity, even though some samples were more effective in decreasing the number of gene conversion colonies and mutant colonies. Regarding the antioxidant activity, assessed using two methods, the more effective was sample B. The anti-inflammatory activity, assessed using the hyaluronidase enzyme, was highest in samples B and D. Pearson's correlation coefficients between polyphenols, flavonoids, antioxidant activity and antimicrobial activity were computed. It was also performed a discriminant analysis.
Organic bee pollen (BP, n = 22) harvested from the Douro International Natural Park (DINP, Portugal) was studied. Nine botanical families were found in the mixture of the samples. The water activity and pH ranged 0.21-0.37 and 4.3-5.2, respectively. The BP analyses averaged 67.7% carbohydrates, 21.8% crude protein, 5.2% crude fat and 2.9% ash. The energy ranged from 396.4 to 411.1 kcal/100 g. The principal fatty acid found was linolenic, followed by linoleic acid, palmitic acid and oleic acid. The phenolic and flavonoid contents varied from 12.9 to 19.8 mg of gallic acid equivalents/g of extract and from 4.5 to 7.1 mg of catechin equivalents/g of extract, respectively. The scavenger activity and β-carotene bleaching assays values (EC 50 ) were 3.0 ± 0.7 mg/mL and 4.6 mg/mL ± 0.9 mg/mL, respectively. E. coli, sulphite-reducing Clostridia, Salmonella and S. aureus were not found. Since there are studies indicating appreciable differences among BPs from different regions, the full characterization of BP from diverse origins still appears to be a sound research priority in order to obtain reliable data about this beehive product.
USE OF POLLEN PROTEINS AS A NUTRITIONAL FEEDS THAT ALLEVIATES THE IMMUNITY OF HONEY BEE
Introduction-Honey bee (Apis mellifera) is the significant pollinator of all the plant species. The main dietary source of honey bee are pollen that provides proteins, amino acids and lipids which are essential to adult bee for its physiological development. In addition, pollens have some nutritive impact on health of honey bees. Insecticides and pathogens like bacteria, viruses and protozoans only leads to colony collapse disorder. Objective-This study has been conducted to emphasize more on the nutritional pollen protein (sunflower, Helianthus annuus and soyabean, Glycine max) uptake of honey bee and to understand the dynamics of nutrition and immunity relationship. Methods-In this study, protein extracted from the pollens of sunflower and soyabean and directly feed or exposed to hemolymph of honey bee for determining its immunity. First of all, pollen protein was analyzed by using FPLC and then analyzed or quantified its immunity against honey bees using standard immunocompetence assays i.e. total hemocyte count and assessed regularly to study the growth kinetics of hemocytes and also observed its effect in the form of forward (shape and size) and side scatter (granularity of the cell) through flow cytometer. Results-The results of this study showed that pollen ofsoyabean showed higher amount of protein as compared to sunflower. In addition, there is enormous increased in hemocytes count after infected with bacteria i.e. bacillus subtilis as compared to hemocytes control. In continuation of this study, pollen proteins of sunflower and soyabean showed declined in both forward and side scatter in case of bees which is infected with bacillus subtilis. Conclusion-Herein, the current study helped us to illustrate the nutritional feed of pollen protein i.e. sunflower and soyabean that will be helpful for eliciting the immunity of honey bee.