Fundamental study on safety estimation of functional foods with the guidance of aryl hydrocarbon receptor activation

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) mediates the toxic and biological actions of dioxins. We previously demonstrated that several natural aryl hydrocarbon receptor ligands from foods showed a dioxin-like activity at high concentration levels. In this study, to pursue the possible use as a probe for estimating the safety of functional foods, which predicts an excess intake of food constituents, the influence of health food materials on the AhR was evaluated. As a result, most tested samples did not show any AhR activation at high concentration levels, but some samples promoted the AhR activity in the range of high concentration levels at 10^6-10^9-fold compared to that of dioxin. Furthermore, several new natural AhR ligands were characterized from the AhR activated fractions of health food materials.