D-Fagomine: A Potential Functional Food Ingredient Present in the Diet for Centuries

Scientists at Bioglane, a Spanish Research Council (CSIC) spin-off company, show now that D-fagomine effectively lowers the peak blood glucose level when taken together with sucrose or starch, without stimulating insulin release.

Oct 5 2011 --- An article soon to be published in the British Journal of Nutrition presents the iminosugar D-fagomine, a potential functional ingredient that helps to maintain healthy blood sugar levels and also shows a very selective prebiotic effect, at small doses.

Sugar mimetics have the capacity to inhibit the intestinal enzymes that break up sucrose and starch into absorbable glucose units. In this way, glucose mimetic iminosugars flatten out the sharp blood glucose peaks that occur after the ingestion of refined carbohydrates. D-Fagomine is a naturally occurring glucose analogue iminosugar, first isolated from buckwheat in 1974. Buckwheat contains a large number of relevant active substances and, based on this novel research, some of the healthy benefits attributed to buckwheat might be related to the presence of D-fagomine.

Scientists at Bioglane, a Spanish Research Council (CSIC) spin-off company, show now that D-fagomine effectively lowers the peak blood glucose level when taken together with sucrose or starch, without stimulating insulin release. This makes D-fagomine a nutritional ingredient that is suitable for the development of novel functional foods. The study was performed by Bioglane in collaboration with different research institutions in the Barcelona area: the Institut de Química Avançada de Catalunya, CSIC; two Universities (Universitat de Barcelona and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) and the Barcelona Science Park.

The results show that D-fagomine helps to control blood glucose without stimulating insulin secretion when ingested together with sucrose or starch. D-Fagomine reduced the area under the blood glucose concentration curve (0-120 min) by 20% and shifted the time to maximum concentration by 15 min at doses of 1-2 mg/kg of body weight when administered to rats together with 1 g sucrose/kg of body weight. The insulin levels decreased in accordance with the decrease in blood glucose.

The paper also describes the novel finding that D-fagomine selectively inhibited the adhesion of Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium and promoted the adhesion of Lactobacillus acidophilus to the intestinal mucosa. This amazing activity should be relevant in the development of novel ways to modulate gut microbiota reducing selectively some bacteria types which has great interest in human nutrition and also in animal nutrition.

D-Fagomine, a natural iminosugar that has been present in the human diet for centuries, is a potential new dietary supplement and functional food ingredient with the capacity to maintain normal blood sugar levels, thus reducing the health risks associated with an excessive intake of fast-digestible carbohydrates. Another possible beneficial effect of consuming D-fagomine is that it selectively inhibits the adhesion of potentially pathogenic bacteria to the gut.

Published online, FirstView Articles, doi:10.1017 / S0007114511005009