TABLE 4.
Therapeutics indications of curcumin, its impacts and mode of action.
| Activity | Mode of action | References |
| Antioxidant | Enhance antioxidant capacity through increasing plasma superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase, as well as serum levels of glutathione peroxidase (GSH) and lipid peroxides. | (195) |
| Elevate serum SOD. | (196) | |
| Act as scavenge various forms of free radicals, as reactive oxygen (ROS) and nitrogen species (RNS) | (197) | |
| Modulate GSH, catalase, and SOD in neutralization of free radicals. | (198) | |
| Inhibit ROS-generating enzymes like xanthine hydrogenase/oxidase and lipoxygenase/cyclooxygenase. | (199) | |
| Consider as lipophilic material, act as scavenger of peroxyl radicals, and act as a chain-breaking antioxidant. | (200) | |
| Metabolic disorders | Improve insulin sensitivity. | (201) |
| Suppress adipogenesis. | (202) | |
| Reduce elevated blood pressure. | (203) | |
| Modulate the expression of genes and enzymes activity included in lipoprotein metabolism causing lowering triglycerides and cholesterol levels in plasma. | (204) | |
| Elevate HDL-C concentrations. | (205) | |
| Decreases serum pro-inflammatory cytokines levels. | (206) | |
| Improve oxidative and inflammatory status. | (195) | |
| Anti-inflammatory | Curcumin could block NF-κB activation elevated by various inflammatory stimuli. | (196) |
| Curcumin has suppressing impact on NF-κB activation and induce the release of IL-8 and cell scattering that cause lowering in inflammation of stomach cells as the primary outcome for H. pylori in the gastric tissues. It suppresses the IκBα degradation, the activity of NF-κB DNA-binding and IκB kinase α and β (IKK α&β). | (207) | |
| Curcumin suppresses the matrix metalloproteinase-3 and metalloproteinase-9 activity (MMP-3 and MMP-9) as inflammatory molecules included in H. pylori in mice. | (208) | |
| Curcumin supplementation to the rats with H. pylori-induced stomach tissue inflammation caused a significant lowering in macromolecular leakage and NF-κB activation. | (209) | |
| Arthritis | Improve osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis via decreasing inflammation. | (210) |
| Alleviate the symptoms of arthritis. | (211) | |
| Cancer | Esophageal Cancer: curcumin modulated Notch-1 signaling and suppressed NF-jB and its downstream targets involving Bcl2, cyclin D1, VEGF, and MMP-9 in oral squamous cell carcinomas. | (212) |
| Esophageal Cancer: curcumin reversed the bile acid induction of COX-2 and suppression of gene expression accompanied with sodium dis-mutase-1 in the esophageal HET-1A epithelial cell lines. | (213) | |
| Breast Cancer: curcumin down regulate of NF-jB, AP-1, COX-1, and –2, VEGF, fibroblast growth factor (FGF), cyclin E, IL-6, and –11, TGF-b, MMP-2, MMP-9, and MMP-13, the upregulation of tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-1. | (214) | |
| Breast cancer: curcumin reduced expression of Skp2, Her2, cyclin E, and CDK kinases in MDA-MB-231/Her2 cells. | (215) | |
| Brain cancers: curcumin stimulated both receptor-mediated and mitochondria-mediated proteolytic pathways for apoptosis in human glioblastoma T98G cells. | (216) | |
| Bone cancer: curcumin stopped cytokines and NF-jB but did not change p38 MAPK activation in the gingival tissues of experimental periodontal disease, in vivo. | (217) | |
| Thymic cancer: curcumin mediated thymic protection happens, at least in part, via neutralization of tumor-induced oxidative stress, restoration of NF-jB activity, and re-education of the TNF-signaling pathway. | (218) | |
| Pulmonary cancer: curcumin improved the expression of cancer suppressor DnaJ-like heat shock protein 40 (HLJ1) via JNK/JunD pathway activation and prevent human lung adenocarcinoma cell invasion and metastasis via modulating E-cadherin expression. | (219) | |
| Multiple Myeloma: curcumin prevents IL-6-induced STAT3 phosphorylation and subsequent STAT3 nu-clear translocation. | (118) | |
| Lymphoma: curcumin lowered NF-jB activity via ROS generation, subsequent by cyto-chrome c release and modulated Bax protein. It also activated caspase-9 and –3 and activated PARP cleavage revealing as-pase-dependent apoptosis in a Burkitt’s lymphoma cell line. | (220) | |
| Ovarian Cancer: curcumin prevents NF-jB and STAT3 activation and inactivate propagation of human ovarian cancer cell lines SKOV3ip1, HeyA8, and HeyA8-MDR, prevent ovarian cancers in athymic mice. In the SKOV3ip1 and HeyA8 in vivo models, curcumin lowered micro-vessel density and angiogenesis, and elevated cancer cell apoptosis. | (221) | |
| Leukemia: curcumin disrupted the G0/G1 phase of the tumor cell cycle and altered cell development via the upregulation of P27kipl, P21wafl, and pRb expression, and it downregulated cyclin D3. Curcumin stimulates apoptosis in CLL-B cells via the inactivation of STAT3, AKT, NF-jB, myeloid cell leukemia 1, and X-linked inhibitor of apoptosis protein, and it upregulated the proapoptotic protein BIM. | (222) | |
| Cervical Cancer: curcumin inhibits in a dose and time dependent the expression of E6 and E7 in cervical cancer cells. Curcumin prevented NF-jB activation via the suppression of IkBa phosphorylation and degradation, and down regulated the expression of COX-2 and AP-1 in cervical tumor cells. | (223) | |
| Bladder Cancer: curcumin induces apoptosis and inhibits human bladder cancer cells in the G2/Mphase by the downregulation of Bcl2, improvement of Bax and p53 expression. Curcumin stops the growth of urothelial cancers in a rat bladder carcinogenesis model. | (224) | |
| Renal Cancer; stimulate apoptosis in Caki cells via DNA fragmentation, the activation of cas-pase-3, cleavage of phospholipase C-g1, and the stimulation of ROS generation by the production of cytochrome c and downregulation of the Bcl2, Bcl-xL, IAP, and Akt pathways. | (225) | |
| Prostate Cancer: curcumin lower micro-vessel density in LNCaP prostate tumor cells, stop their proliferation and angiogenesis, in vivo. | (226) | |
| Pancreatic Cancer: curcumin lowers the expression of NF-jB-regulated gene products like COX-2, PGE2, and IL-8. | (227) | |
| Hepatic Cancer: curcumin lower the expression of Chk1 protein, stopped the cell cycle at the G2/M phase and stimulate apoptosis in hepatoma cell lines, stimulates DNA damage and growth arrest via elevation of ROS and lipid peroxidation in the therapy of HepG2 cells. | (228) | |
| Gastric Cancer: curcumin lower the expression of human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 and the activity of p21-activated kinase 1, stop the transformation of stomach cancer cells from the G1 to S phase via the downregulation of cyclin D1. | (229) | |
| Colorectal Cancer; curcumin therapy reveals cell shrinkage, chromatin condensation and DNA fragmentation by increasing growth arrest via pro-motion of the DNA damage-inducible gene (DDIT3) at the protein and mRNA levels in colon cancer cell lines, prevents the propagation of colon tumor cell lines and stimulates apoptosis by caspase-3-mediated b-catenin cleavage, downregulate c-Myc, blocks cell cycle progression by cyclin D and cyclin B expression, and elevated the activity of cell division control 2. | (230) | |
| Intestinal Cancer: curcumin lowered the expression of b-catenin in the red blood cell of Min/þ mice. | (231) | |
| Antibacterial | Curcuma longa rhizome has antibacterial effect via the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) value of 4–16 g/L and minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) value of 16 to 32 g/L versus S. aureus, S. epidermis, Klebsiella pneumoniae and E. coli. | (232) |
| The hexane, ethanol turmeric extract and curcuminoids with 86.5% curcumin value, have antibacterial effect versus 24 pathogenic bacteria recovered from the chicken and shrimp. | (233) | |
| The adding of 0.3% (w/v) of aqueous curcumin extract to the cheese revealed lowering in bacterial numbers of S. typhimurium, P. aeruginosa, and E. coli. Moreover, it lowered the S. aureus, B. cereus, and Listeria monocytogenes pollution post 2 weeks of cold storage time. | (234) | |
| Curcumin has inhibitory activity on methicillin-resistant S. aureus strains with MIC value of 125–250 μg/mL. | (235) | |
| Curcumin has antibacterial effect with MIC values among 5 and 50 μg/mL versus 65 clinical isolates of H. pylori. | (236) | |
| Antifungal | The adding the turmeric powder in plant tissue culture revealed that turmeric at the 0.8 and 1.0 g/L has inhibitory effect versus mycotic contaminations. | (237) |
| The methanol extract of turmeric showed antimycotic effect versus Cryptococcus neoformans and Candida albicans with MIC values of 128 and 256 μg/mL, respectively. | (238) | |
| Curcumin has antifungal effect versus. Aspergillus and Candida species. | (239) | |
| Antiviral | Di-O-tryptophanyl phenylalanine curcumin and di-O-decanoyl curcumin showed antiviral effect versus VSV and FIPV/FHV. However, bioconjugates did not show significant antiviral effect versus IIIB and ROD strains of type 1 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) in MT-4 cells. | (240) |
| Curcumin inactivates the acetylation of Tat protein of HIV accompanied with inhibition of (HIV-1) proliferation. | (241) | |
| Curcumin has antiviral activity via inhibition of coxsackievirus replication via dysregulation of the ubiquitin-proteasome system. | (242) |