Nutraceuticals, natural products

SHW has also been apphed to the separation of nutraceuticals, natural products, and biochemicals, including the water-soluble vitamins, thiamine, riboflavin, and pyidoxine (Table 18-3) without significant thermal degradation. 

HPLC separations are a fundamental analytical tool for the vast majority of testing laboratories. Over the last few years HPLC has expanded in two important ways. First, it become even more prevalent in the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical (natural product), and protein/peptide characterization areas. Second, along with this, mass spectrometry has become more widespread as a detector of choice. 

Extraction processes for natural products including the decaffeination of coffee and tea and the isolation of nutraceuticals, flavors, and fragrances... 

Over the last decade, there has been a steady increase in the popularity and usage of natural products to enhance overall health. These nutraceuticals and functional foods modulate the function of various physiological systems including the immune system. By altering immunity, it is possible to augment an individual s ability to ward off infection, or suppress autoimmunity and chronic inflammatory diseases. Thus, the renaissance of herbal extracts as well as the increased consumption of other dietary components has afforded the public a relatively inexpensive way to self-medicate. 

Owing to the immense diversity of animals and microbes in the marine environments, and their almost untouched capacity to produce natural products, the importance for marine pharmaceutical and nutra-ceutical industries was realized on a broad basis by the scientific communities recently. This has strengthened worldwide research activities on the exploration of bioactive compounds from marine organisms for pharmaceutical use, as well as the development of other valuable products, such as enzymes, nutraceuticals, and cosmeceuticals. 

Pharaohs regarded food to be the bearer of both divinity and vital strength. The current interest in the positive health effects of functional foods, nutraceuticals and herbal medicines seems to be a return to the philosophy of ancient Egypt. The public seems to have an impetuous optimistic view about these natural products and so a realistic risk-benefit analysis for these products is not requested by the consumer. As a result these products are consumed without any toxicological hesitation, and concerns on the safety of these products are scarce. 

TABLE 18-3. Superheated Water Chromatography of Nutraceuticals and Natural Products... 

The major group of nutraceuticals are of endogenous origin, being natural products responsible for... 

Contaminants, particularly heavy metals, are a problem in certain herbal preparations, but in nutraceuticals, breakdown products, synthetic intermediates, and co-occurring related constituents extracted from natural sources are also possible contaminants. Specific contaminants may be evident in particular products, such as alkanol esters in policosanol, and DMSO in MSM, due to manufacturing or extraction problems. 

In the food industry, these natural products have now been classified under a new class of food called nutraceuticals or functional foods, because these products provide a health benefit beyond basic nutrition 22, 23). According to Wilkinson 24), most of the nutraceuticals used in the food industry are plant derived. Further, Addae-Mensah (25), showed that the world trade in medicinal plants accounts for about 30% of the total dmg market and was estimated excluding plants used as raw material sources for the essential oils required to manufacture cosmetics, food additives and other non-medicinal purposes. The increased recogiution of the value of natural products in the pharmaceutical, neutraceutical, cosmetic and other industries have created a huge demand for raw natural products. By taking Rooibos tea as an example from South Africa, Wilson 26) in detail describes the demand for Rooibos from different countries. However, for many natural products estimation of the actual demand is very difficult and the data sparse given the diversity of natural products used across industries and production variation within and across countries and the lack of... 

The properties of natural products obtained from plants, fungi, animals, and other organisms of terrestrial or marine origin have intrigued mankind for millennia, in particular those products that exert an effect (i.e., have a particular bioactivity) on humans or other organisms. Such compounds have long been used as nutraceuticals, social elixirs, intoxicants, drugs of abuse, or as therapeutics. 

Despite decades of research, there still remains a vast scope for new natural products to be discovered and isolated from microbial, marine, arthropod, or plant organisms and used as nutraceuticals or pharmaceuticals. Such tasks will require access to more sophisticated and better optimized separation and identification methodologies. To this end, it will also be the responsibility of future generations of natural product scientists... 

Bench-scale evaluation of the feasibility of extracting a nutraceutical is usually accomplished with the aid of a small-scale extractor. Such units are available commercially, but an increased experimental flexibility is achieved by constructing a customized SFE unit. Alternatively, there exists the availability of small-scale SFE equipment, normally intended for analytical uses of critical fluid technology, which can also be used to optimize and assess the extraction of a natural product (28). Both of the above approaches can also incorporate the introduction of a cosolvent into the critical fluid, should this be required in the processing of a nutraceutical source. 

Non-refined cold pressed crude palm oil, also called Red Pahn Oil , has been consumed in Central and West Africa since time immemorial, as it has also been in Central America and Brazil. Red pahn oil has a wonderful rich flavour it is the richest known natural product in tocotrienols and carotenes, which give rise to the red colour. Development of techniques like integrated extraction technologies to recover these functional components from pahn oil has contributed to the emergence of the nutraceutical industry in Malaysia that produces tocopherol and tocotrienol capsules, carotene-rich palm oil and pahn... 

The term nutraceutical, coined in 1989 by Stephen DeFelice, arises from combination of two words, nutrition and pharmaceutical, and defines food or food products that can provide medical and health benefits, including prevention and treatment of disease. Whole grains, beans, and herbs are known to include natural products with therapeutic potential, but fruits and vegetables are their main natural source. Edible mushrooms have also been reported to have medicinal properties [8,9]. Fortified foods, dietary supplements, herbal products, genetically engineered foods, and processed products such as cereals, soups, and beverages are considered nutraceuticals, even when in most cases bioactive components have not been scientifically standardized [10]. 

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