Plant Source Foods
Chuong Pham-Huy, Bruno Pham Huy in Food and Lifestyle in Health and Disease, 2022
Goji berry or wolfberry has two main species: Lycium barbarum and Lychium chinense, both belonging to the Solanaceae family. The species L. barbarum is widely cultivated for food and traditional medicine in China. Goji berry is native to Northwest China. The fruit has an ovoid shape with about 0.6–2 cm in length and 0.3–1 cm in diameter with deep orange-red waxy skin. The fruit contains 20–50 seeds and has a sweet and fruity taste and a creamy-white flesh (85). Harvested fresh goji berries are sun-dried for several days before marketing for culinary or medicinal uses. Dried goji can store well for up to one year. Dried goji berries are an excellent source of energy and essential nutrients (sugars, proteins, dietary fibers, vitamins). They contain several potentially bioactive components arabinogalactanproteins (AGPs), the carotenoid zeaxanthin, and the vitamin C precursor: β-D-glucopyranosyl ascorbic acid (85). AGPs are soluble glycoconjugates or soluble polysaccharides or a type of glycans. The main biological properties of AGPs are: modulation of the immune system, antitumor activity, and antioxidant activity (85).
Wolfberry (goji berry)
Linda M. Castell, Samantha J. Stear (Nottingham), Louise M. Burke in Nutritional Supplements in Sport, Exercise and Health, 2015
Wolfberry and goji berry are interchangeable terms for the red fruits of either of the two boxthorn plants in the potato family, Lycium barbarum (syn. Lycium halimifolium) and Lycium chinense. Both are important herbal components of traditional Chinese medicine, where they are often referred to as gou qi. The berries (i.e. fructus barbarum, fructus lycii) are used for both food and medicine whereas root bark (cortex lycii radicis) is used solely for medicine (Potterat, 2010). These plants should not be confused with Solanum lycocarpum, variously known as wolf’s apple, wolf’s fruit or fruit-of-the-wolf, which contains toxic alkaloids. Wolfberry fruits are the plant component used most often in sports supplements and contain several purported bioactive molecules including carotenoids, flavonoids, vitamins including plentiful vitamin C, sterols and polysaccharides (Potterat, 2010). Bioavailability studies suggest that, when berries are extracted in milk as in traditional Chinese medicine, zeaxanthins (a subclass of carotenoids) are found in the bloodstream, peaking at six hours post-ingestion (Benzie et al., 2006).
Decontextualised Chinese medicines
Vivienne Lo, Michael Stanley-Baker, Dolly Yang in Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine, 2022
Known as goji or 枸杞 (Gouqi, in Chinese, the fruit of Lycium barbarum L.), goji berry has been used as a traditional medicine and food for over 2000 years in China and other Asian countries (Yao et al. 2018a). In some regions, such as Japan and South Korea, the fruit of L. chinense Mill. is also used, although these two species have obvious differences in their metabolomic profiles (Yao et al. 2018b). While the plant was introduced into the global North in the eighteenth century, it was not a popular health food until the twenty-first century.
SIRT 3 was involved in Lycium barbarum seed oil protection testis from oxidative stress: in vitro and in vivo analyses
Published in Pharmaceutical Biology, 2021
Zhang-Jie Yang, Yu-Xin Wang, Shuai Zhao, Na Hu, Dong-Mei Chen, Hui-Ming Ma
Lycium barbarum L. (Solanaceae) is a traditional food and Chinese medicine that has nourished the liver and kidney (Tan et al. 2019) and has maintained fertility for thousands of years (Ren et al. 2019). Traditionally, Lycium barbarum seed oil (LBSO) is extracted from Lycium barbarum seeds, cultured in the northwest of China, and widely used as a functional food (Potterat 2010). Several studies have shown that grape seed oil delays senescence by attenuating oxidative (Harbeoui et al. 2019) and inflammatory responses (Millan-Linares et al. 2018). Other oils, such as rice bran oil (Lee et al. 2019), olive oil (Perrone et al. 2019), and sunflower oil (Navarro-Hortal et al. 2019), also achieve a similar effect in anti-ageing. Therefore, the present study investigated the active functions on the antioxidative stress of LBSO and showed the effects of L. barbarum on protecting individuals from ageing by antioxidation and anti-inflammation; however, the active components of L. barbarum are yet elusive (Gao et al. 2017). Thus, this study investigated the effect of LBSO on antioxidative stress and illuminated the potential mechanism that might activate SIRT3.
Lycium barbarum polysaccharides protect mice from hyperuricaemia through promoting kidney excretion of uric acid and inhibiting liver xanthine oxidase
Published in Pharmaceutical Biology, 2020
Xin Yu, Lu Zhang, Ping Zhang, Jia Zhi, Ruinan Xing, Lianqi He
Lycium barbarum L. (Solanaceae), a traditional Chinese medicine, has the effects of nourishing the liver and kidney and replenishing vital essence to improve eyesight. Lycium barbarum polysaccharides (LBPs) are the main effective ingredient of Lycium barbarum, comprised of glucose, arabinose, galactose, mannose, xylose, rhamnose and fucose (Zeng et al. 2019; Liu et al. 2020). Studies have demonstrated that LBPs have multiple pharmacological functions, including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antitumor, immune regulation, neuroprotective, hypoglycaemic and hypolipidemic effects (Li XM et al. 2007; Miao et al. 2010; Cheng et al. 2015; Xing et al. 2016; Po et al. 2017; Tang ZY et al. 2017; Pop et al. 2020). Moreover, Li J et al. (2017) demonstrated the protective effects of LBPs in renal damage. Thus far, the use of LBPs to treat hyperuricaemia has not been reported. In this study, we examined the efficacy of LBPs in reducing the serum uric acid levels in a mouse model of hyperuricaemia induced by potassium oxonate. We also investigated the possible mechanisms of this effect.
Bauhinia forficata in the treatment of diabetes mellitus: a patent review
Published in Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Patents, 2018
Bárbara Verônica Cardoso de Souza, Regilda Saraiva dos Reis Moreira Araújo, Oskar Almeida Silva, Lucas Costa Faustino, Maria Fabrícia Beserra Gonçalves, Mirian Lima Dos Santos, Grasielly Rocha Souza, Lindalva Moura Rocha, Mônica Larissa Sousa Cardoso, Lívio César Cunha Nunes
Lycium barbarum, a fruit that also has in its composition bioactive polysaccharides, mainly mannose, rhamnose, glucose, galactose, and xylose, inhibited the absorption of glucose in vitro and may be a potent antidiabetic agent [65]. Another plant with activity with this activity is Rourea cuspidata, whose continuous administration of 200 mg/kg of its hydroalcoholic extract, in vivo, significantly reduced the blood glucose concentration of diabetic rats, with a similar effect to glibenclamide, which acts stimulating the secretion of insulin from β cells of the islets of Langerhans, and the hyperin, present in this plant, may be the hypoglycemic agent, since it has the capacity to increase glycolysis, due to the increase in liver hexokinase activity and decrease activities of gluconeogenic enzymes [66–68].