Nutrients present in various foods plays an important role in maintaining the normal functions of the human body. The major nutrients present in foods include carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, vitamins, and minerals. Besides these, there are some bioactive food components known as “phytonutrients” that play an important role in human health. They have tremendous impact on the health care system and may provide medical health benefits including the prevention and/or treatment of disease and various physiological disorders. Phytonutrients play a positive role by maintaining and modulating immune function to prevent specific diseases. Being natural products, they hold a great promise in clinical therapy as they possess no side effects that are usually associated with chemotherapy or radiotherapy. They are also comparatively cheap and thus significantly reduce health care cost. Phytonutrients are the plant nutrients with specific biological activities that support human health. Some of the important bioactive phytonutrients include polyphenols, terpenoids, resveratrol, flavonoids, isoflavonoids, carotenoids, limonoids, glucosinolates, phytoestrogens, phytosterols, anthocyanins, ω-3 fatty acids, and probiotics. They play specific pharmacological effects in human health such as anti-microbial, anti-oxidants, anti-inflammatory, anti-allergic, anti-spasmodic, anti-cancer, anti-aging, hepatoprotective, hypolipidemic, neuroprotective, hypotensive, diabetes, osteoporosis, CNS stimulant, analgesic, protection from UVB-induced carcinogenesis, immuno-modulator, and carminative. This mini-review attempts to summarize the major important types of phytonutrients and their role in promoting human health and as therapeutic agents along with the current market trend and commercialization.

Geriatrics is a medical practice that addresses the complex needs of older patients and emphasizes maintaining functional independence even in the presence of chronic disease. Treatment of geriatric patients requires a different strategy and is very complex. Geriatric medicines aim to promote health by preventing and treating diseases and disabilities in older adults. Development of effective dietary interventions for promoting healthy aging is an active but challenging area of research because aging is associated with an increased risk of chronic disease, disability, and death. Aging populations are a global phenomenon. The most widespread conditions affecting older people are hypertension, congestive heart failure, dementia, osteoporosis, breathing problems, cataract, and diabetes to name a few. Decreased immunity is also partially responsible for the increased morbidity and mortality resulting from infectious agents in the elderly. Nutritional status is one of the chief variables that explains differences in both the incidence and pathology of infection. Elderly people are at increased risk for micronutrient deficiencies due to a variety of factors including social, physical, economic, and emotional obstacles to eating. Thus there is an urgent need to shift priorities to increase our attention on ways to prevent chronic illnesses associated with aging. Individually, people must put increased efforts into establishing healthy lifestyle practices, including consuming a more healthful diet. The present review thus focuses on the phytochemicals of nutraceutical importance for the geriatric population.

Phenols, a major group of antioxidant phytochemicals, have profound importance due to their biological and free radical scavenging activities. To identify their potential sources extracts of some fruits and their different parts were studied for total phenolic contents (TPC), antioxidant (AOA) and free radical scavenging activities (FRSA). The amount of TPC varied from 10.5 (Carissa carandus, fruit peel) to 343.2 mg/g (Caesalpinia Mexicana, fruits) and AOA from 20.3% (Musa paradisiacal, fruits) to 96.7% (Caesalpinia Mexicana, fruits). Fruits of Caesalpinia Mexicana, Acacia auriculiformis, fruit pericarp green fibres of Cocus nucifera, and fruits of Emblica officinalis were found to have high TPC (73.1-343.2 mg/g) and high AOA (68.5-96.7%). Promising fruits were studied for their FRSA and reducing power (RP) measured by DPPH assay where the fruits of Caesalpinia mexicana, fruit pericarp fibres of Cocus nucifera, fruits of Emblica officinalis showed very low IC50 ranging from 0.009 to 0.016 mg/ml, EC50 from 0.39 to 0.70 mg/mg DPPH and reasonably high values (142.1-256.3) of anti radical power (ARP), indicating their strong FRSA and reducing power (RP) as evident by their low ASE/ml values (0.42-1.08). They also showed better inhibition of lipid peroxidation measured by using ferric thiocyanate assay and by using egg yolk compared to the reference standard quercetin. The ferrous and ferric ion chelating capacity of the promising fruits and their underutilized parts in terms of IC50 varied from 0.12 (Emblica officinalis, fruits) to 2.44 mg/ml (Mangifera indica, Seed kernel) and 0.22 (Caesalpinia Mexicana, fruits) to 2.59 mg/ml (Litchi chinensis, fruit peel) respectively. Fruit pulp, peel and seeds of Litchi chinensis with reasonable amount of phenols (48.3, 43.9, 50.1 mg/ml) showed low ARP (23.5, 38.3, 33.8) and ASE/ml (3.13, 2.18, 2.62) respectively in contrast to Aegle marmelos with comparatively lower phenols (35.1 mg/g) exhibited good ARP (57.4) and RP (1.67 ASE/ml). Extracts (20 µg/ml) of fruits of Acacia auriculiformis, Caesalpinia Mexicana, Emblica officinalis, fruit pericarp fibres of Cocus nucifera, were found effective in protecting plasmid DNA nicking induced by Fenton’s reagent generated hydroxyl radicals. They were further assayed for their specific phenolic composition through HPLC and MS/MS where the amount of caffeic acid varied from 48.5 to 2231 µg/g, chlorogenic acid 63.8 to 912.1 µg/g, ellagic acid 46.4 to 1429.1 µg/g, ferulic acid 36.7 to 762.9 µg/g, gallic acid 181.6 to 2831.6 µg/g, protocatechuic acid 41.7 to 322.8 µg/g, and quercetin 44.6 to 367.6 µg/g.

Diamond nano-particles find new and far-reaching applications in modern biomedical science and biotechnologies. Due to its excellent biocompatibility, nano-diamonds serve as versatile platforms that can be embedded within polymer-based microfilm devices. Nano-diamonds are complexed with a chemotherapeutic that enables sustained/slow release of the drug for a minimum of one month, with a significant amount of drug in reserve. This opens up the potential for highly localized drug release as a complementary and potent form of treatment with systemic injection towards the reduction of continuous dosing, and as such, attenuation of the often powerful side effects of chemotherapy. Nano-diamonds are quite economical, enabling the broad impact of these devices towards a spectrum of physiological disorders e.g. serving as a local chemotherapeutic patch, or as a pericardial device to suppress inflammation after open heart surgery. Nano-diamond patch could be used to treat a localized region where residual cancer cells might remain after a tumor is removed. Nano-diamonds can be used to explore a broad range of therapeutic classes, including additional small molecules, proteins, therapeutic antibodies, RNAi.