Riboflavin: The Health Benefits of a Forgotten Natural Vitamin.

Riboflavin (RF) is a water-soluble member of the B-vitamin family. Sufficient dietary and supplemental RF intake appears to have a protective effect on various medical conditions such as sepsis, ischemia etc., while it also contributes to the reduction in the risk of some forms of cancer in humans. These biological effects of RF have been widely studied for their anti-oxidant, anti-aging, anti-inflammatory, anti-nociceptive and anti-cancer properties. Moreover, the combination of RF and other compounds or drugs can have a wide variety of effects and protective properties, and diminish the toxic effect of drugs in several treatments. Research has been done in order to review the latest findings about the link between RF and different clinical aberrations. Since further studies have been published in this field, it is appropriate to consider a re-evaluation of the importance of RF in terms of its beneficial properties.

Preclinical In Vitro Safety Investigations of Submicron Sized Hemoglobin Based Oxygen Carrier HbMP-700.

Hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers (HBOCs) are being developed as oxygen and plasma volume-expanding therapeutics though their potential to promote oxidative tissue injury and nitric oxide (NO) scavenging combined with vasoconstriction has raised safety concerns. Therefore, we focused on these aspects during preclinical studies performed with the recently introduced hemoglobin microparticles (HbMP-700). Besides oxidative stress, we investigated possible vasoconstrictory influence of HBOCs as well as genetic toxicity. The novel developed HbMP-700 presented here provides a high oxygen affinity which prevents premature oxygen oversupply and avoids vasoconstriction of small blood vessels in vitro. The size of these particles is 700 nm (larger than 100 nm and smaller than 1000 nm) in order to prevent penetration through the blood vessel's endothelial gaps, NO-scavenging, and to avoid phagocytosis of large particles. We expect that the HbMP-700 meets the sophisticated requirements as a universal blood substitute.