Background: Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are among the deadliest non-communicable diseases, and millions of dollars are spent every year to combat CVDs. Unfortunately, the multifactorial etiology of CVDs complicates the development of efficient therapeutics. Interestingly, phytopigments show significant pleiotropic cardioprotective effects both in vitro and in vivo.
Purpose: This review gives an overview of the cardioprotective effects of phytopigments based on in vitro and in vivo studies as well as clinical trials.
Methods: A literature-based survey was performed to collect the available data on cardioprotective activities of phytopigments via electronic search engines such as PubMed, Google Scholar, and Scopus.
Results: Different classes of phytopigments such as carotenoids, xanthophylls, flavonoids, anthocyanins, anthraquinones alleviate major CVDs (e.g., cardiac hypertrophy, atherosclerosis, hypertension, cardiotoxicities) via acting on signaling pathways related to AMPK, NF-κB, NRF2, PPARs, AKT, TLRs, MAPK, JAK/STAT, NLRP3, TNF-α, and RA.
Conclusion: Phytopigments represent promising candidates to develop novel and effective CVD therapeutics. More randomized, placebo-controlled clinical studies are recommended to establish the clinical efficacy of phytopigments.
Keywords: Cardiovascular diseases; Carotenoids; Flavonoids; Natural products; Signaling transduction pathways; Xanthophylls.
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