Hypertension Essay -- Health, Cardiovascular Diseases, Stroke

Hypertension is one of the major risk factors for the development of cardiovascular diseases including stroke and may also have a role in the development of vascular cognitive impairment and vascular dementia 1, 2. Angiotensin I-converting enzyme (EC 3.4.15.1 ACE) plays an important role in the rennin-angiotensin system and it is a carboxyl-terminal dipeptidyl exopeptidase that catalyzes the conversion of angiotensin I to angiotensin II 3-6. ACE converts an inactive form of decapeptide, angiotensin I, to a potent vasoconstrictor, octapeptide, angiotensin II, in addition since the ACE is a multifunctional enzyme it also catalyzes the abasement of bradykinin, which is known as a vasodilator 4, 7. Therefore, inhibition of ACE activity leads to decrease in the concentration of angiotensin II and increases the level of bradykinin consequently expurgate blood pressure 8. The discovery of captopril as a potent inhibitor of ACE led to the recent development of many series of novel structu res with identical biological activity 9. To date a wide variety of ACE inhibitors from various land and marine food sources have been reported such as milk 10, cheese 11, egg white 12, canola 13, peanut 14, rapeseed 15, antler 16, fish muscle 17, seaweeds 18 and tuna 2. Many academic, scientific, and regulatory organizations are considering ways to establish the scientific fanny to support and further validate claims for functional components or the foods containing them. Consumer interest in the relationship between diet and health has increased the demand for information around functional foods. More recently, the food industry, the agricultural community, and now consumers have shown a growing interest in the field of... ...dependent on the conversion of yellow tetrazolium commonplace to its purple formazan derivative by mitochondrial succinate dehydrogenase in viable cells 34. In conclusion, E. cava is a very interesting resource, due to the presence of unique phlorotannin derivatives with special bioactivities including ACE inhibitory activity. Ethanol enhances the extraction of phlorotannins specially dieckol from the brown seaweed E. cava. By contrast, in this study phloroglucinol derivative dieckol exhibited the strongest activity against ACE. With the results of this study we can suggest that the brown seaweed E. cava could be utilize in development of promising and potential functional food products. Moreover, it is expected that these findings will contribute to developing interests in basic research and potential applications of the phlorotannins in the relevant fields.