The 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) represents an ongoing major global health crisis with a potentially unprecedented death toll and socio-economic impact in the modern era. Measures taken to reduce the rate of transmission are too unprecedented but are deemed necessary (1).
COVID‐19 has emerged as a multifaceted, multi‐organ disorder, which produces its pathogenic effects at the level of multiple organs and in which oxidative stress and inflammatory process play relevant roles.
Today we want to focus our attention on recent research in the of alternative and coadjutant therapeutic, the use of dietary supplements or nutraceuticals for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19 and inflammation.
A recent review published on the journal of Food Biochemistry on the 10th of November 2020 from the Department of Pharmaceutical Science, University of Milan highlighted and summarised the use of food-derived antioxidants to treat and COVID-19 and inflammation as well as oxidative stress in people with COVID-19(1).
We all recently been informed about the possible use of vitamin D supplements to prevent severe complications in people with COVID-19 and we updated our customers back in October about the link between Vitamin D and COVID-19(2).
Since the early ’90s, food-derived compounds such as polyphenols and vitamin C were studied for their activity to prevent and fight inflammation and oxidative stress. In the last 20 years, the use of antioxidants as supplements in food and cosmetic products helped to grow the applications of the nutraceutical science and have taken this to the next level.
Oxidative stress and inflammation are key factors increasing COVID‐19 severity, especially in the presence of chronic diseases associated with the antioxidant system fragility. These pieces of evidence opened the possibility to investigate the use of food-derived compounds in COVID-19 cases. Interestingly an article from Chen et al.(3) published in March 2020 showed as a combination of vitamin C, curcumin (turmeric) and glycyrrhizic acid (liquorice), potentially regulates immune and Inflammatory response associated with coronavirus infections. The possibility to use food-derived compounds to help prevent and fighting COVID-19 is exciting news.
In this world health emergency caused by the spread of COVID-19 virus, it is reasonable to recommend the right consumption of antioxidant nutrients to guarantee good “strengthening of defences.” Food diet and supplements clearly show significant promise for preventing and treating COVID‐19; however, robust clinical research data are required to support any such claim.
With this update, we want to give our customer some more information around the use of a healthy diet rich in antioxidants to help prevent and fight coronavirus. We know that this is a challenging time and that at the moment we are waiting for a vaccine to be developed to help us come back to a sort of “normality”, but until then we want to give you some advice how to keep healthy and help boost your immune system. We hope you enjoyed that read and please feel free to download the articles for more information. Please stay safe and remember we are in it together and together we will get through.
References:
- https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jfbc.13557?af=R
- https://www.testyourintolerance.com/nutrition-testing-coronavirus/
- https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/12/4/1193
