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

芳烃受体（AhR）介导二恶英的毒性和生物作用。我们先前证明了几种来自食品的天然芳烃受体配体在高浓度水平下表现出类似二恶英的活性。本研究探讨了健康食品原料对AhR的影响，以期为功能性食品的安全性评估提供一种可能的方法，以预测食品成分的过量摄入。结果表明，大多数检测样品在高浓度水平下没有任何AhR活性，但部分样品在高浓度范围内的AhR活性是二恶英的10^6-10^9倍。此外，还从保健食品原料的AhR活化组分中鉴定了几种新的天然AhR配体。

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.