Healthy Food Tomato, the Natural and Potential Anti-Inflammatory Remedy

By Kyle J. Norton

Inflammation is a natural response by the immune system to protect the body against the invasion of stimuli or foreign pathogens.

In other words, the white blood cells on the first line of defense of the immune system after sensing the danger of an infection in the body through a message from the brain stimulate the production of palette to cover  the site of injury or damage and inflammatory cytokines to kill off all pathogens before they can cause harm to the body.

Most cases on infection are stopped at the acute phase. The wound or injury are slowly recovered.

However, in severe cases, particularly in people with the weakened immune system, the inflammatory progression cannot be stopped due to the inability of the immune system to destroy all invaders, leading to low-grade chronic inflammation.

Diseases associated with low-grade inflammation include diabetes and cardiovascular.

Believe it or not, worldwide, 3 of 5 death are results from chronic inflammatory diseases like stroke, chronic respiratory diseases, heart disorders, cancer, obesity, and diabetes.

In the US, chronic inflammatory diseases affect more than 50 million Americans each year.

Dr. Roma Pahwa in the classification of chronic inflammation wrote, "Chronic inflammation is also referred to as slow, long-term inflammation lasting for prolonged periods of several months to years. Generally, the extent and effects of chronic inflammation vary with the cause of the injury and the ability of the body to repair and overcome the damage".

And, "(The causes of chronic inflammation are) Failure of eliminating the agent causing acute inflammation, ..., Exposure to a low level of a particular irritant or foreign materials,...An autoimmune disorder,... Recurrent episodes of acute inflammation,... Inflammatory and biochemical inducers"

Tomato is red, edible fruit, genus Solanum, belongs to family Solanaceae, native to South America. Because of its health benefits, the tomato is grown worldwide for the commercial purpose
and often in the greenhouse.

On finding a potential compound for the treatment of inflammatory diseases researchers examined the effect of tomato ketchup extracts and bioactives from tomato ketchup on human monocytes and vascular endothelial cells (HUVEC).

HUVEC selected to the study were pre-treated for 1 h with either individual bioactives (7.5 µM lycopene, 1.4 µM α-tocopherol or 55 µM ascorbic acid) or a combination of these three compounds, or with the hydrophilic or lipophilic tomato ketchup extracts or with the two extracts combined.

According to the tested assays, tomato ketchup extracts significantly reduced gene expression and pro-inflammatory cytokines TNF-α and IL-8 in HUVEC after inducing inflammation.

Furthermore, levels of anti-inflammatory release were increased observed by the expression of anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10.

The effects were correlated with the reduction of IL-8 production in the presence of the test compounds and extracts.

In other words, lycopene found in the tomato extract is one of the major bioactive compounds that induce the anti-inflammatory effect and α-tocopherol and ascorbic acid appeared to strengthen the anti-inflammatory effect of lycopene.

In order to obtain more information about tomato anti-inflammatory activity, researchers analyzed the potential protective effects of phytochemicals in tomatoes on inflammation. 

According to the nitric oxide (NO) assay, tomato extract exhibited anti-inflammatory effect by inhibiting the NO production in LPS-stimulated RAW264 macrophages.

Levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines were significantly decreased after injection of tomatoes.

The efficacy of tomato was attributed to the bioactive compound RF52 in the inhibition of the production of these proinflammatory mediators.

Dr. Kim YI, the lead scientist said, "These results suggest that RF52 from tomatoes may have the potential to suppress inflammation by inhibiting the production of NO or proinflammatory cytokines during the interaction between adipocytes and macrophages".

Taken altogether, tomatoes may be considered functional food for the prevention and treatment of inflammatory diseases, pending to the confirmation of the larger sample size and multicenter human study.

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Author Biography
Kyle J. Norton (Scholar, Master of Nutrition, All right reserved)
Health article writer and researcher; Over 10.000 articles and research papers have been written and published online, including worldwide health, ezine articles, article base, health blogs, self-growth, best before it's news, the karate GB daily, etc.,.
Named TOP 50 MEDICAL ESSAYS FOR ARTISTS & AUTHORS TO READ by Disilgold.com Named 50 of the best health Tweeters Canada - Huffington Post
Nominated for shorty award over last 4 years
Some articles have been used as references in medical research, such as international journal Pharma and Bioscience, ISSN 0975-6299.

Sources
(1) Protection against chemotaxis in the anti-inflammatory effect of bioactives from tomato ketchup by Hazewindus M1, Haenen GR1, Weseler AR1, Bast A. (PubMed)
(2) Tomato extract suppresses the production of proinflammatory mediators induced by interaction between adipocytes and macrophages by Kim YI1, Mohri S, Hirai S, Lin S, Goto T, Ohyane C, Sakamoto T, Takahashi H, Shibata D, Takahashi N, Kawada T. (PubMed)
(3) Chronic Inflammation by Roma Pahwa; Ishwarlal Jialal. (NCBI)