Natural Products and Hepatic Health: Lights and Shadows
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Pathology, Diagnostics, and Therapeutics".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2023) | Viewed by 8693
Special Issue Editor
Interests: antioxidants; antioxidant activity; lipid peroxidation; oxidative stress; reactive oxygen species
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The health of the liver depends mostly on the processes of bioactivation and detoxification that take place in it. Drug-metabolizing enzyme systems catalyze these biochemical reactions and can be induced or inhibited by a large number of drug molecules or biologically active compounds, i.e. secondary metabolites from plant extracts and other natural products. However, drugs undergo extensive and lengthy preclinical and clinical trials during which the involvement and role of drug-metabolizing enzymes and cellular transporters can be established. Most nutritional supplements and plant extracts do not go through this long and financially draining process, although people consume them in huge quantities, believing that "if they are of natural origin, then they are safe". Large randomized and long-term clinical trials are not conducted with them. The lack of evidence for the efficacy and safety of supplements of natural origin creates a risk in their uncontrolled use, especially in combination with other drugs. We have yet to find out whether branded hepatoprotectors are absolutely harmless and really protect the liver, or whether hepatotoxins do not have a beneficial effect on other organs and systems. The debate has not yet been resolved.
This special issue aims to collect molecular studies on natural compounds relevant to hepatic health. Importantly, the exact active ingredient of natural origin extract must be reported in the submitted research manuscript, since papers describing the effects of mixed extraction from natural origin are not in the scope of the journal.
In this issue, authors are invited to submit original research, reviews, short communications, or clinical cases to collaboratively explore the role of natural products on liver health.
Dr. Rumyana Simeonova
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- drug-herb metabolic interactions
- hepatotoxic natural products
- hepatoprotective natural products
- plant accumulation of hepatotoxins
- liver metabolizing enzymes
- liver bioactivation
- liver detoxification
- mechanism of liver toxicity
- mechanisms of liver protection
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