Royal jelly: a natural therapeutic?
Arı sütü: doğal bir terapötik mi?
Ali Korhan Sığ 1 * , Özlem Öz-Sığ 2, Mustafa Güney 3
1 Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine, Department of Medical Microbiology, Ankara, Turkey
2 Balikesir Ataturk City Hospital, Department of Pediatrics, Balikesir, Turkey
3 University of Health Sciences, Gulhane Faculty of Medicine, Department of Medical Microbiology, Ankara, Turkey
* Corresponding Author
Ortadogu Tıp Derg, Volume 11, Issue 3, pp. 333-341
https://doi.org/10.21601/ortadogutipdergisi.500434
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Abstract
Royal jelly is a secretion of honeybees that is actually for feeding of bee larvae. It contains many bioactive substances such as jelleins, royalisin, major royal jelly proteins and 10-hydroxy-2-decenoic acid. Recently, many studies were published investigating activities of royal jelly. In overall, royal jelly found to have antioxidant, neurotrophic, antidiabetic, hypocholesterolemic, regulatory on blood pressure, antimicrobial, immunomodulatory, anti-tumor and tissue-protective effects. These activities are strongly related to each other and cannot be evaluated separately. Researchers claim that royal jelly can be an excellent therapeutic agent (or an additional agent), especially in treatments of cancer and metabolic syndrome. However, there are huge gaps due to limited number of in vivo studies and there are standardization issues both for usage and investigations. Furthermore, wide variability of contents in royal jelly due to geographic locations, climate, etc also causes a problem in choice of exact royal jelly. Currently it seems to be safe and effective nutritious agent for healthy people, but it is hard to gain an overall perspective in usage as a therapeutic, since there is a necessity of wider studies with more different types of royal jelly.
Öz
Arı sütü aslen arı larvalarının beslenmesi için bal arıları tarafından üretilen bir sekresyondur. Jelleinler, royalizin, ana arı sütü proteinleri ve 10-hidroksi-2-desenoik asit gibi çok sayıda biyoaktif madde içermektedir. Son yıllarda arı sütü konusunda çok sayıda makale yayımlanmıştır. Genel olarak, arı sütü, antioksidan, nörotropik, antidiyabetik, hipokolesterolemik, kan basıncı düzenleyici, antimikrobiyal, immünomodülatör, anti-tümör ve doku koruyucu etkileri göstermektedir. Bu etkiler aslen bir bütündür ve mekanizmaları ayrı ayrı değerlendirmek mümkün değildir. Araştırmacılar, özellikle kanser ve metabolik sendrom tedavisinde iyi bir tedavi ajanı (veya tedaviye ek bir ajan) olabileceğini iddia etmektedir. Öte yandan, in vivo çalışmaların sayısı son derece sınırlıdır ve hem araştırma hem kullanım alanlarında standardizasyon sorunu vardır. Ayrıca, coğrafi konum, iklim gibi koşullara bağlı olarak arı sütü içeriğinin ciddi farklılıklar göstermesi, arı sütünün seçiminde sorunlar yaratmaktadır. Şu an için, sağlıklı insanlarda güvenli ve etkin bir besleyici gıda olarak gözükmekte, fakat terapötik kullanımı konusunda genel bir görüş elde etmek mümkün gözükmemektedir. Farklı türlerde arı sütleri üzerinde daha geniş çaplı araştırmalar yapılmalıdır.
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