What are Flavonoids ?
Writen by: Rosabel Torrellas-Hidalgo, Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry
Flavonoids.
The bright colors of most fruits and vegetables
Flavonoids and polyphenols
- Flavonoids are the class of polyphenols more abundant and widespread in the plant world.
- They are in different parts of the vascular plants.
- In 1937 the Hungarian scientist Albert Szent-Györgyi, Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, found its vascular protective properties and gave them the name vitamin P.
- Until now, it has been found in these natural products, antioxidants, anti-inflammatory, antiplatelet, antihemorrhagic, vasodilator, antineoplastic, antiviral, antibacterial, anti-allergic , and hepatoprotective properties
- Currently, their biological properties are subject to important biomedical research.
- Based on these activities, flavonoids are considered today as potential therapeutics agents against a wide variety of diseases.
What are flavonoids and where are they?
- Flavonoids are a large number of natural products of low molecular weight, most with structure phenyl-benzo-y-pyran (or phenyl-y-chromone). They are plant secondary metabolism products.
- In plants, flavonoids are found in the free state, or more frequently as flavonolic glycosides.
- The flavonolic glycosides are generally soluble in water, while their aglycone, the non-associated glycoside moiety, are the only slightly.
- There is a relationship between the biological activity of flavonoids and their chemical structure, particularly hydroxylation patterns in the rings of the structure.
