Abstract
According to the World Health Organization, cardiovascular diseases are responsible for 31% of global deaths. A reduction in mortality can be achieved by promoting a healthy lifestyle, developing prevention strategies, and developing new therapies. Polyphenols are present in food and drinks such as tea, cocoa, fruits, berries, and vegetables. These compounds have strong antioxidative properties, which might have a cardioprotective effect. The aim of this paper is to examine the potential of polyphenols in cardioprotective use based on in vitro human and rat cardiomyocytes as well as fibroblast research. Based on the papers discussed in this review, polyphenols have the potential for cardioprotective use due to their multilevel points of action which include, among others, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antithrombotic, and vasodilatory. Polyphenols may have potential use in new and effective preventions or therapies for cardiovascular diseases, yet more clinical studies are needed.
Highlights
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) 2016 datasheet, 17.9 million deaths were caused by cardiovascular diseases, representing 31% of global deaths [1]
Polyphenols, which possess anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antithrombotic, cardioprotective, and vasodilatory effects, give some hope for future applications, especially as the mentioned effects were confirmed by several groups in in vitro and in vivo studies
In the case of rat cardiomyocytes aging, resveratrol directly decreases antioxidant markers with no influence on antioxidant enzymes, which was confirmed by Aguilar-Alonso et al (2018) [15]
Summary
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) 2016 datasheet, 17.9 million deaths were caused by cardiovascular diseases (coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, peripheral arterial disease, rheumatic heart disease, congenital heart disease, deep vein thrombosis, and pulmonary embolism), representing 31% of global deaths [1]. Polyphenols have gained interest due to their cardioprotective effect, which is related to antioxidative activity [10,11,12,13,14,15], anti-inflammatory activity [11,16,17,18], modulation and synchronization of cardiomyocyte beating [10], and protection against cell apopto-. The authors observed that quercetin significantly reduces the phosphorylation of STAT3, reduces the level of COX-2, inhibits ROS production, and increases the expression of MnSOD in H2O2treated cells. This suggests that quercetin may suppress the inflammation process and possess antioxidant activity in H2O2-induced H9c2 cells. The authors showed that the preincubation of cardiomyocytes with quercetin (0.1–10 μg/mL, 24 h) completely inhibited the production of ROS generated by the xanthine/xanthine oxidase. Quercetin reversed xanthine/xanthine oxidaseinduced down-regulation of phosphorylated heat shock protein 27 (p-Hsp27), p-c-Jun down regulation and inhibited a xanthine/xanthine oxidase-mediated increase in cleaved caspase-3 [19]
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