Abstract
Oxidative and inflammatory stress represents a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD) in overweight and obese subjects. Between the different plant foods, chocolate has been shown to decrease CVD risk due to its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. However, as we recently showed in epidemiological studies, meta-analyses, and human trials, dietary antioxidants resulted more effective in subjects characterized by an ongoing oxidative stress, than in healthy people. Aim of this work was to investigate the effect of different concentrations of chocolate phenolic extract (CPE) on in vitro free radical production, stimulated by phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA), in leukocytes extracted from blood of normo-weight and overweight/obese subjects. Neutrophils from overweight/obese group had a significantly higher free radical production compared to the normo-weight group. In neutrophils, the lowest CPE concentration significantly reduced free radical production in overweight/obese group only, and higher CPE concentrations were effective in both groups. In monocytes, the CPE concentration that was significantly effective in reducing free radical production was lower in overweight/obese subjects than in normo-weight subjects. Chocolate polyphenol extracts inhibit oxidative burst in human neutrophils and monocytes with a higher efficiency in subjects characterized by an unphysiological oxidative/inflammatory stress, such as overweight and obese. Results of this study provide further evidence about a differential role of dietary antioxidant strictly related to the “stress” condition of the subjects.
Highlights
Oxidative stress, imbalance between reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and the neutralizing capacity of antioxidant mechanism, represents a prepathological status involved in the development of majority of degenerative diseases [1]
Sample 1, showing the highest content of total polyphenols as well as the highest antioxidant capacity, was characterized for its phenolic profile (Table 2) and was used for an ex vivo study aimed to investigate the effect of chocolate phenolic extract (CPE) addition on phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA)-induced oxidative burst of leukocytes isolated by normo-weight and overweight/obese subjects
The effect of chocolate polyphenols was evaluated by comparing the monocytes and neutrophils activation between the two groups of subjects after adding different concentrations of chocolate extract
Summary
Imbalance between reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and the neutralizing capacity of antioxidant mechanism, represents a prepathological status involved in the development of majority of degenerative diseases [1]. The ROS production upon oxidative burst have been suggested to be modulated by dietary antioxidants that can scavenge free radicals and exert indirectly their activity by inhibiting enzymes involved in ROS production. Therapeutic tools such as functional foods and nutraceuticals were proposed to treat inflammatory diet-related disease, among which is obesity [18]
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