Table 1.
Studies of the beneficial effects of saffron, crocin, crocetin, or safranal supplementation in ocular diseases
| Disease | dose | Experimental model/cell culture/clinical studies | Studies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Glaucoma | Crocetin: 20 or 100 mg/kg | NMDA-induced retinal damage; mouse | Ohno et al., 2012 |
| Crocin and crocetin | LPS inflammatory model; microglial cell culture | Nam et al., 2010 | |
| Crocin | LPS inflammatory model; microglial cell culture | Lv et al., 2016 | |
| Crocetin: 20 mg/kg | Retinal ischemia model; mouse | Ishizuka et al., 2013 | |
| Crocin: 50 mg/kg | Retinal ischemia/reperfusion model; rat | Chen et al., 2015 | |
| Crocin: 5, 25, or 50 mg/kg | Retinal ischemia/reperfusion model; rat | Qi et al., 2013 | |
| Saffron extract: 60 mg/kg | OHT laser-induced model; mouse | Fernández-Albarral et al., 2019 | |
| Saffron: 1 g | POAG clinical study | Hecht et al., 2019 | |
| Saffron extract: 30 mg | POAG clinical study | Bonyadi et al., 2014 | |
| AMD | Saffron: 1 mg/kg | Light exposure-induced damage; rat | Bisti et al., 2014 |
| Crocetin: 10–100 mg/kg | Light exposure-induced damage; rodent | Yamauchi et al., 2011 | |
| Saffron: 1 mg/kg | Light exposure-induced damage; rat | Di Marco et al., 2019 | |
| Crocin and crocetin | Ischemia model; rat | Xuan et al., 1999 | |
| Saffron: 25 μg/kg | ATP-induced damage | Corso et al., 2016 | |
| Saffron: 20 mg | Early AMD clinical study | Falsini et al., 2010 | |
| Saffron: 20 mg | Early AMD clinical study | Piccardi et al., 2012 | |
| Saffron: 20 mg | Early AMD clinical study | Marangoni et al., 2013 | |
| Saffron: 30 mg | Wet and dry AMD clinical study | Lashay et al., 2016 | |
| Diabetic retinopathy | Crocin | Microglial cell culture | Yang et al., 2017 |
| Crocin: 5–15 mg | Diabetic maculopathy | Sepahi et al., 2018 | |
| Retinitis pigmentosa | Safranal: 400 mg/kg | RP model; rat | Fernández-Sánchez et al., 2012 |
| Saffron: 1 mg/kg | Light exposure-induced damage; rat | Marco et al., 2013 | |
| Saffron: 1 mg/kg | Light exposure-induced damage; rat | Maccarone et al., 2008 | |
| Crocetin: 10–100 mg/kg; 3 μM | Light exposure-induced damage; mouse/tunicamycin and hydrogen peroxide-induced damage; cell culture | Yamauchi et al., 2011 | |
| Myopia | Crocetin: 10–100 mg/kg | Lens-induced myopia model; murine | Mori et al., 2019a |
| Crocetin: 7.5 mg | Clinical study; children | Mori et al., 2019b | |
| Retino-blastoma | Crocin: 0, 5, 10, 20, 40, 80 μM | Retinoblastoma; cancer cells culture | Deng et al., 2019 |
| Proliferating | Crocetin: 0, 50, 100, and 200 μM | RPE cells culture | Wang et al., 2017 |
| Vitreo-retinopathy | Crocetin: 0, 100, 200 and 400 μM | RPE cells culture | Zhang et al., 2019 |
| Crocetin: 0.4 μmol/eye | PVR-induced by i.v. ARPE-19 cells | Wang et al., 2019 |
AMD: Age-related macular degeneration; LPS: lipopolysaccharide; NMDA: N-methyl-D-aspartate; OHT: ocular hypertension; POAG: primary open angle glaucoma; PVR: proliferative vitreoretinopathy; RP: retinitis pigmentosa; RPE: retinal pigment epithelial cells.