Development of bioresources in Okinawa: understanding the multiple targeted actions of antioxidant phytochemicals

In research to develop healthy foods or preventive medicines from edible and medicinal herbs in Okinawa, we focused on the antioxidant activities of those bioresources. We first confirmed that the herbal antioxidant activities of such herbs increased upon ultraviolet irradiation treatment. This observation explains the high antioxidant activity of Okinawan vegetables, which grow under exposure to stronger ultraviolet light compared with those in other prefectures in Japan. Antidiabetic, hepatoprotective, cancer preventive, and cardioprotective actions were clarified using herbal extracts, and quercetin, chlorogenic acid, and gallic acid derivatives were isolated as antioxidant components from the herbs. Dimerumic acid was also isolated from the mold Monascus anka. All these antioxidants showed strong radical scavenging activities in vitro and beneficial effects in animal models. However, the concentrations of these compounds used in vivo seemed to be too low to have a physiologically important antioxidant effect based on their radical scavenging activities in vitro. Therefore, I performed a literature survey of antioxidant activities in vivo. Accumulating evidence has emerged that antioxidant phytochemicals show not only radical scavenging activities in vitro but also pleiotropic actions in vivo. The multitargeted, beneficial effects of antioxidant phytochemicals can be rationally explained using the xenohormesis concept, in which phytochemicals are the products of plant evolutionary adaptation to stress in plants, and their ability to induce a stress-adaptive response has been evolutionarily conserved in animals.