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Dietary intake of flavonoids and carotenoids is associated with anti-depressive symptoms: Epidemiological study and in silico-mechanism analysis
Phytochemicals are a class of biologically active nutrient compounds found in plants, and serve several nutritional and immunoprotective functions. Some phytochemicals possess antioxidant properties, such as flavonoids and carotenoids, which were found to protect against symptoms of depression when consumed in diet. Park et al. (2021) conducted this study to investigate the impact of flavonoid and carotenoid consumption on symptoms of depression in a population of adult females. Depression was investigated using the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), while dietary intake of flavonoids and carotenoids was evaluated through a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. The authors found that an intake of flavones, anthocyanins, individual phenolic compounds, lycopene, and zeaxanthin lead to a substantial decrease in symptoms of depression. To understand the nature of this finding further, the authors conducted an in silico analysis (pharmacological analysis using computational models) of the flavonoids, revealing that flavonoids had a high propensity to bind with monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) and monoamine oxidase B (MAOB), which are two key enzymatic targets in the pathology of depression. This binding resulted in enhancing the activation of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) by carotenoids. The authors conclude that these findings present the potential mechanism through which flavonoids and carotenoids impact symptoms of depression, and the promise they hold as prospective dietary modalities to treat symptoms of depression. [NPID: Carotenoids, depression, flavonoids, in silico]
Year: 2021
