mercredi 5 janvier 2011

PURE SAFFRON OF TALIOUINE MOROCCO

Taliouine

Taliouine village, near the city of Taroudant, in the southern Souss Region of Morocco, is known for its large production of Crocus sativus, commonly known as saffron. Other villages in the area also produce the coveted spice but the village of Taliouine has the largest market share of saffron production.  According to the Moroccan Regional Agricultural Development Office, the volume of production of saffron in this town, of 12,000 people, is estimated to be around 7000 pounds per year. The total area dedicated to this traditional culture in Morocco is about seven and a half million square yards with 1285 farmers. The country is currently classified as the forth saffron producer in the world, after Iran, India and Greece.
Saffron is used in cuisine, medicine and cosmetics. It remains a traditional culture that uses few modern tools. Most of the work is done by hand. Farmers, Bent to the ground, must distinguish between small flowers in order to pick a specific one. It takes about 150,000 flowers to produce one single kilogram of saffron.


MEDICINAL AND PHARMACEPTICAL PROPERTIES
Effect on Learning Behavior and Long-term Potentiation
The saffron extract and two of its main ingredients crocin and crocetin,improved memory and learning skills in ethanol-induced learning behavior impairments in mice and rats. Oral administration of saffron may be useful as treatment for neurodegenerative disorders and related memory impairment. (Abe and Saito, 2000; Abe., 1994; Sigura et al., 1995).
Effects on Ocular Blood Flow and Retinal Function
Crocin analogs isolated from saffron significantly increased the blood flow in the retina and choroid as well as facilitated retinal function recovery and it could be used to treat ischemic retinopathy and/or age-related macular degeneration (Xuan et al., 1999).
Effect on Coronary Artery Disease
Fifty milligrams of saffron dissolved in 100ml of milk was administered twice a day to human subjects and the significant decrease in lipoprotein oxidation susceptibility in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) indicates the potential of saffron as an antioxidant (Verma and Bordia, 1998).

Effect on Blood Pressure
Aqueous and ethanol extracts of saffron reduced the blood pressure in a dose dependent manner. EFS of the isolated rat vas deferens also were decreased by these  saffron extracts (Fatehi, 2003).

Antinociceptive and Anti-inflammatory Effects
Saffron stigma and petal extracts exhibited antinociceptive effects in chemical pain test as well as acute and/or chronic anti-inflammatory activity and these effects might be due to their content of flavonoids, tannins, anthocyanins, alkaloids, and saponins (Hosseinzadeh and Yiounesi, 2002).

Antidepression Effect
In clinical trial have demonstrated that saffron may be of therapeutic benefit in the treatment of mild to moderate depression (Akhondzadeh, 2004; Noorbala,2005).

Anticonvulsant Effect
In Iranian traditional medicine, the saffron had been used as an anticonvulsant remedy. In experiments with mice using maximal electroshock seizure (MES) and pentylenetetrazole (PTZ) tests have demonstrated that the aqueous and ethanolic extracts of saffron possess anticonvulsant activity. (Hosseinzadeh and Khosrava,2002).
 
Antiparkinsonian Effect
Crocetin, which is an important ingredient of saffron may be helpful in preventing Perkinsonism (Ahmad, 2005).

Antiatherosclerosis Effect
Recently it was demonstrated that suppression of LDL oxidation by crocetin contributes to the attenuation of atherosclerosis.
 
Mutagenic or Antimutagenic Effects
It was reported that crocin and dimethyl-crocetin isolated from saffron were non-mutagenic (Salomi, 1991). Using the Ames/Salmonella test system (strains TA97; TA98; TA100; TA102, and TA1538), we demonstrated that the saffron extract
itself in concentration up to 1500 mg/plate was non-toxic, non-mutagenic, and nonantimutagenic (Abdullaev, 2002, 2003).
A test compound was considered mutagenic if the number of the His+ revertant colonies was increased at least twice over the value of the corresponding control (MI > 2), over at least three doses levels, and a reproducible dose-response curve could be
demonstrated.

Antigenotoxic Effect
The topical administration of saffron extracts (100 mg/kg body weight) inhibited the initiation/promotion of 7,12-dimethylbenz [a] anthracene (DMBA)- induced skin tumors in mice. The oral administration of the same dose of saffron extracts restricted tumor incidence of 20-methylcholanthrene (MCA)-induced soft tissue sarcomas in mice (Salomi, 1991). Extracts from saffron stigmas prolonged the life span of cisplatin-treated mice (Nair, 1991, 1993, 1994). Pretreatment with the aqueous extract of saffron in experiments with Swiss albino mice significantly inhibited the genotoxicity of cisplatin, cyclophosphamide, mitomycin, and urethane (Prekumar, 2001, 2003). Crocetin from saffron also ameliorates bladder toxicity of the anticancer agent cyclophosphamide without altering its antitumor activity (Nair,1993). The treatment of animals with cysteine (20 mg/kg body weight) together with saffron extract (50 mg/kg body weight) significantly reduced the toxic effects caused by cisplatin (Daly, 1998).
 
Tumoricidal Effect
The oral administration of the saffron extract increased the life span of Swiss albino mice intraperitoneally transplanted with sarcoma-180 (S-180) cells, Ehrlich ascites carcinoma (EAC) and Dalton’s lymphoma ascites (DLA) tumors (Nair, 1991).
In an animal model (frog embryos), crocetin, from saffron was effective in treating certain types of cancer (Martin, 2002). The long-term treatment with crocin significantly increased survival time and decreased tumor growth rate, induced by rat adenocarcinoma DHD/K12-PROb cells (Garcia-Olmo, 1999). An increase in the levels of b-carotene and Vitamin A in the serum of laboratory animals under oral administration of saffron extracts was detected and suggested that saffron carotenoids possessed provitamin A activity according to the hypothesis that the action of carotenoids was dependent upon its conversion to retinal (Vitamin A), because most of the evidence supporting the anticancer effects of carotenoids were referred to bcarotene (Daly, 1998, Tarantilis, 1994).

Cytotoxic Effect
The ethanolic saffron extract significantly inhibited the colony formation and cellular DNA and RNA synthesis, whereas inhibition of protein synthesis was not detected. Crocetin, from saffron inhibited intracellular nucleic acid and protein synthesis in malignant human cell lines and no had effect on colony formation. The inhibition of growth of human chronic myelogenous leukaemia K562 and promyelocytic leukaemia HL-60 cells by dimethyl-crocetin, crocetin, and crocin with 50 % inhibition (ID50) reached at concentrations of 0.8 and 2 mM, respectively,(Morjani,1990; Tarantilis,1994). Cytotoxicity of dimethylcrocetin and crocin to various tumors cell lines (DLA, EAC, S-180, L1210 leukemia, and P388 leukemia) and to human primary cells from surgical specimens (osteosarcoma, fibrosarcoma,and ovarian carcinoma) was detected (Nair, 1995). The inhibitory effect of the ethanolic saffron extract on the in vitro growth of HeLa cells (ID50 = 2.3 mg/ml) was mainly due to crocin (ID50 of 3 mM) (Escribano, 1996).
Proposed Mechanisms for Cancer Preventive and Tumoricidal Effects of Saffron
Different hypotheses for the modes of anticarcinogenic and antitumor actions
of saffron and its components have been proposed (Abdullaev, 2002, 2004).
1. The inhibitory effect on cellular DNA and RNA synthesis, but not on protein
synthesis.
2. The inhibitory effect on free radical chain reactions, because most carotenoids are lipid-soluble and might act as membrane-associated high-efficiency free radical
scavengers.
3. The metabolic conversion of naturally occurring carotenoids to retinoids.
4. The interaction of carotenoids with topoisomerase II, an enzyme involved in
cellular DNA-protein interaction. Thus, although several hypotheses have been put
forward, the exact mechanism(s) of anticarcinogenic and antitumor effects of saffron and its main constituents are not clear at present.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by funds from CONACYT


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