Metabolic and epigenetics action mechanisms of antiobesity medicinal plants and phytochemicals

Abstract

Ever-growing research efforts are demonstrating the potential of medicinal plants and their phytochemicals to prevent and manage obesity, either individually or synergistically. Multiple combinations of phytochemicals can result in a synergistic activity that increases their beneficial effects at molecular, cellular, metabolic and temporal levels, offering advantages over chemically synthesized drugs-based treatments. Herbs and their derived compounds have the potential for controlling appetite, inhibiting pancreatic lipase activity, stimulating thermogenesis and lipid metabolism, increasing satiety, promoting lipolysis, regulating adipogenesis as well as inducing apoptosis in adipocytes. Furthermore, targeting adipocyte life cycle using various dietary bioactives that affect different stages of adipocyte life cycle represents also an import target in the development of new antiobesity drugs. In this regard, different stages of adipocyte development that are targeted by antiobesity drugs can include preadipocytes, maturing preadipocytes and mature adipocytes. Various herbal-derived active compounds, such as capsaicin, genistein, apigenin, luteolin, kaempferol, myricetin, quercetin, docosahexaenoic acid, quercetin, resveratrol, and ajoene affect adipocytes during specific stages of development, resulting in either inhibition of adipogenesis or induction of apoptosis. Although numerous molecular targets that can be used for both treatment and prevention of obesity have been identified, targeted single cellular receptor or pathway has resulted in limited success. In this review, we discuss the state of the art knowledge on antiobesity medicinal plant and their active compounds and their effects on several cellular, molecular and metabolic pathways simultaneously with multiple phytochemicals through synergistic functioning might be an appropriate approach in a better management of obesity. In addition, epigenetics mechanisms (acetylation, methylation, miRNAs, ubiquitylation, phosphorylation, chromatin packaging) of phytochemicals and their preventive and therapeutic perspective are explored in this review.