Dietary anthocyanins and the MAPK signaling pathway: from food sources to molecular mechanisms

Anthocyanins (ACNs) are a sub-group of dietary polyphenols with well-studied safety, potency and efficacy against chronic inflammation and age-related diseases. However, the unified molecular mechanism remains not fully defined. This review integrates recent evidence on dietary ACNs, with emphasis on food sources, processing stability, and bioavailability, to elucidate how ACNs orchestrate health benefits via the MAPK signaling pathway. This review highlights an important, dualistic regulation: while suppressing stress-responsive p-p38 and p-JNK to prevent NF-κB-driven cytokine production and senescence-associated secretory phenotypes, ACNs facilitate the promotion of p-ERK1/2 to enhance the CREB-BDNF axis and promote synaptic plasticity. Translational validations involving various models and clinical trials demonstrate that ACNs can efficiently alleviate systemic inflammation (CRP, IL-6) and significantly prevent p-JNK. These effects are highly dependent on dietary intake, food matrix composition, and processing conditions that influence the formation of bioactive metabolites. In this context, dietary ACNs represent promising candidates for functional food development owing to their precise bidirectional modulation of the MAPK pathways. Future studies should prioritize mechanism-driven randomized controlled trials using physiologically relevant concentrations of microbiota-derived metabolites.