Nutraceutical, Anti-Inflammatory, and Immune Modulatory Effects of β-Glucan Isolated from Yeast

• Main Authors: Umar Bacha, Muhammad Nasir, Sanaullah Iqbal, Aftab Ahmad Anjum
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hindawi Limited 2017-01-01
• Series: BioMed Research International
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2017/8972678
• ISSN: 2314-6133; 2314-6141

β-Glucan is a dietary fibre, found in many natural sources, and controls chronic metabolic diseases effectively. However, β-glucan from the yeast has rarely been investigated. Objectively, conditions were optimized to isolate β-glucan from the yeast (max. 66% yield); those optimized conditions included 1.0 M NaOH, pH 7.0, and 90°C. The purity and identity of the isolated β-glucan were characterized through FT-IR, SEM, DSC, and physicofunctional properties. The obtained results from DSC revealed highly stable β-glucan (m.p., 125°C) with antioxidant activity (TAC value 0.240 ± 0.0021 µg/mg, H2O2 scavenging 38%), which has promising bile acid binding 40.463% and glucose control (in vitro). In line with these results, we evaluated the in vivo anti-inflammatory potential, that is, myeloperoxidase activity and reduction in MDA and NO; protective effect on proteins and keeping viscosity within normal range exhibited improvement. Also, the in vivo cholesterol binding and reduction in the skin thickness by β-glucan were highly encouraging. Finally, our results confirmed that yeast β-glucan is effective against some of the inflammatory and oxidative stress markers studied in this investigation. In general, the effect of 4%  β-glucan was more noticeable versus 2%  β-glucan. Therefore, our results support the utilization of β-glucan as a novel, economically cheap, and functional food ingredient.