Intestinal permeability of garlic phytochemicals

TORRES PALAZZOLO, CAROLINA; RAMIREZ, DANIELA ANDREA; MANUCHA, WALTER; CASTRO, CLAUDIA; CAMARGO, ALEJANDRA BEATRIZ

Mendoza

Encuentro; XXXIV Reunión Científica Anual de la Sociedad de Biología de Cuyo; 2016

Sociedad de Biología de Cuyo

Garlic (Allium sativum L.) has been used since ancient times as medicinal plant. Numerous studies have related, its bioactive phytochemicals content, more precisely the organosulfur compounds (OSCs), with beneficial health effects. To support that the consumption of a product, which contains bioactive phytochemicals improves health, bioavailability studies should be addressed. These studies should consider the different stages that compounds must overcome to become available (digestion, absorption, primary metabolism, and distribution). Previous studies concerning OSCs bioaccessibility are scarce and they are limited to the study of a few compounds behavior in digestive fluids; moreover, bioavailability animal studies had measured OSCs amounts circulating in blood. Nevertheless, for our knowledge, no information about OSCs permeability can be found. For that reason, arise the need to develop a study to evaluate OSCs permeability and thus, determine whether this is a limiting step. OSCs intestinal permeability was evaluated by ex-vivo non-everted rat intestinal sacs technique. Allicin, ajoene, 2-vinyldithiins (2VD), diallyl disulfide (DADS) and diallyl trisulfide (DATS) were the tested compounds. The results showed that only allicin, DAS and 2VD were able to pass; their apparent permeability coefficients were below 3.7x10-7, these coefficient values were correlated with low human intestinal permeability in a previous study. Intestinal passage proved to be a limiting step in OSCs bioavailability.