Molecular Mechanism of Spices and Their Active Constituents for the Prevention and Treatment of Diseases

Communicable and non-communicable diseases pose a significant global threat to human populations, being linked to high mortality. The total mortality due to non-communicable diseases is more than 60%, while the death from infectious diseases (including COVID-19) is also reported to be very high. There are different drugs and therapies available for such diseases; however, the treatments are linked with severe adverse side effects of various types, immunosuppression, nephrological problems, and so on. Thus, it is imperative to look for novel therapeutics with lesser side effects, which are helpful in regulating the different disease-associated factors such as antioxidant enzymes, inflammatory cytokines, chemokines, adhesion molecules, kinases, transcription factors, etc. Therefore, to subdue these drawbacks, spices and their components are of great potential, and various evidential studies have confirmed the modulation of the aforementioned factors in different preclinical and clinical studies. Several studies have reported that the modulation of these disease-associated factors with spices and their components leads to the amelioration of the diseases like cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, etc. Thus, this present chapter highlights the important properties of spices and their components in the prevention and treatment of various diseases via modulating the important molecules involved in diseases. The review deals with the various molecular bases of the actions of spices, and the topic is elaborated under the following heads: