The Polyphenolics and Health Effects of Pomegranate

Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) is a useful fruit which mostly consumed as fresh fruit and can also be used as a various of processed products. Reports proved pomegranate were beneficial to health. Polyphenolic compounds in pomegranate especially ellagitannin (hydrolyzed), anthocyanins, gallotannin, and ellagic acid can maintain oral hygiene, healthy skin from the effects of free radicals caused by UV radiation, has the ability to synthesize cholesterol, destroying free radicals in the human vascular system and can prevent prostate cancer. In vitro and in vivo test has shown the fruit is acting as anti diabetic drug, and hypolipidemic, anticarcinogenic, antibacterial, anti inflamation, and antiviral. This review presenting an overview about the bioactive compound contents, physiological and health function of the fruit.


INTRODUCTION
Pomegranate (Punica granatum; Punicaceae) is a fruit originated from the Middle East.Pomegranate's popularity is known for a long time by the Iranian efforts.Currently, pomegranate is spread all over the world especially in Mediterania, China, South East Asia and other tropical areas (Levin, 1994).In Rome, this species is known as "Malum punicum" (punican apple) and then it is known as "Punicum granatum".C. von Linneaus gave "Punica granatum" which was after city of Granada in Spain.
Pomegranate has 2 variants which are Punica granatum and Punica protopunica.P. protopunica is pink, and large, while P. granatum is red, smaller and less sweeter.P. granatum has more than 1000 cultivars (Mars, 2000).Pomegranate is considered as a well grown tree in dry zone with height of 5-8 metres.Pomegranate is one of the shrubs, bloom all year long, bunion shaped long round, flat shapes, hard consistency, not structured, red, pink, and white in colours (Ganes, 2010).
Pomegranate can be consumed fresh or extracted as refreshment as juice, canned beverages, jello, jams, paste, flavor enhancer and also can be used as beverages colouring agents.(Fadavi et al., 2005;Mousavinejad et al., 2009).Edible part of pomegranate (around 50% from weight) consists of coated seeds 80% dan 20% seeds (Aviram et al., 2000).Wang (2011), has proven that the making of pomegranate juice by mixing seeds and skin together was given a better effect considering the polifenol substances has a lot of potential to increase antioxidants effects from fenolat, proantosianidin and flavonoid contains within its skin.
The potention of antioxidant in pomegranate is very high, which is around 92% (Gil et al., 2000).This is because the pomegranate skin contains a lot of punikalagin substance, while the seed and fruit contains a lot of elagic acid and galatic acid (Loren et al., 2005;Zheng, 2011), which is a very good source of antioxidant (Seeram et al., 2005;Singh et al., 2000).Evidence showed that pomegranate can keep facial skin young because the polifenol substance can protect the body from free radicals and even stronger if compared to orange or apple (Tyagi, 2012).Based on the facts, consuming pomegranate juice as part of the routine can protect and also fixing broken liver, protect kidney and prevent heart attack.Apart from that, pomegranate also have the ability in assisting cholesterol synthesis, destroying free radicals in human blod vessel and prevent prostatic cancer (Malik et al., 2005).
Currently, pomegranate is used in cosmetic manufacture, cure for diarhhea, respiration (Lansky et al., 2007), even for food (Finkel & Holbrook, 2000).For this review, we will elaborate the contents of pomegranate, bioactive substance which have the ability as antimicrobes, antioxidants, anticancer, antidiabetic,anti inflammatory and health benefits.

Biosynthesis of Elagic Acid in Pomegranate
Ellagic acid's biosynthesis in pomegranate follow the generic pattern of substance as follows: ellagic acid synthesized from hexahydroxy-dyphenil dycarboxilic through lactonization between carboxylic and hydroxylic  (Martos et al.,2010) clinically proven to have anticancer activities (Lansky et al., 2006), can be used as cosmetics, wound treatment and anti-allergy (Al-sabahi et al., 2014).

Bioactive
There are epidemiologic studies showed that by consuming rich contents of polyphenol food and beverages can decrease some disease risk such as hypertension, coronary heart disease, atherosclerosis, ).The most important part from pomegranate's bioactive is polyphenol which has the ability as antioxidants.As antioxidant, polyphenol also helps cancer, diabetes, heart disease and UV radiation towards skin.(Wang et al., 2010).Bioactive substance within the pomegranate have the ability as follows: . Antioxidants The antioxidants of pomegranate juice is widely studied.The result of the study is that the juice extract can bind free radicals and create better effect significantly compared to other fruit extract such as oranges, grapes, plums and pineapples (Halvorsen et al., 2002).Pomegranate's juice can inhibit the in vitro LDL oxidation (Aviram, 2000) and also effective to decrease the level of in vivo LDL oxidation in mice (Xu et al., 2005).Kawamada et al. 2002 andMoayadi et al., 2004, suggested that polyphenolic substance in pomegranate can protect skin from free radical effects of the UV radiation.Pomegranate also have the ability to help cholesterol synthesis, break free radicals in human blood vessel and prevent prostatic cancer (Malik et al., 2005).Pomegranate's antioxidant activity is mediated by phenolic hydroxil group with double bindings including tannin, flavonoid, non fatty acid.The result is linear correlation between total antioxidant activity and phenolic contents resulting that phenolic is the most dominant antioxidant inside pomegranate (Surveswaran et al., 2007).
Tanin is one of the best antioxidant found in almost part of pomegranate.Tanin such as elagic acid and punikalagin have important roles in pomegranate (Sestili et al., 2007).Seeram et al., 2008 compared antioxidant capacity and polyphenolic composition from 12 fruit juices in United States by using 3 methods.Those methods are: 1) test the antioxidant potential of the oxygen radical absorbance capacity (6 -hydroxy -2,5,7,8 -tetramethylchroman -2 -carboxylic acid (Trolox) Equivalent Antioxidant Capacity / TEAC), oxygen radical absorption capacity ( Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity / ORAC), 2,2 -diphenyl -1picrylhydrazyl ( DPPH), and ferric reducing ability of plasma (ferric reducing ability of plasma -/ FRAP; 2) test the antioxidant function, ie, inhibition of oxidation of low -density lipoprotein (LDL ) ; and 3 ) evaluation of total polyphenol content.Those twelve fruit juices tested had the highest level of elagitanin and had the highest antioxidant capacity (Halvorsen et al., 2002).Elagic acid reacts with free radicals because its ability to bind metallic ions, is a strong antioxidant towards lipid peroxyde in mitochondria and microsome (Seeram et al., 2005).Barrier toward lipid peroxidation makes pomegranate skin have major contribution as antioxidant.This inhibition was given by giving electron as donor so the electron can dispel the free radicals from lipid peroxidation (Anand et al., 2004;Lansky et al., 2007).

. Antimicrobial
Apart from Helicobacter pylori, Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhi, dan Shigella, pomegranate's extract is also showed significant inhibition effect towards pathogenic bacteria especially gram positive bacteria.As stated by Nagaraju (1990), dried pomegranate skin boiled in water can be used for diarrhea and warts problems.Studies reported that Staphylococcus aureus both metilcyllin resistence (MRSA) and metycyllin sensitive are susceptible to pomegranate's skin fruit extract.This can be seen from the usage of pomegranate skin on bacterial infection (Machado et al., 2003;Braga et al, 2005).Apart from that, other bacteria such as Streptococcus hemolyticus, Vibrio cholerae, Bacillus typhosus, Proteus bacillus, Proteus vulgaris, Bacillus subtilis, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Listeria monocitogenes, dan Candida albicans, are also reported to be susceptible to pomegranate extract (Navarro et al., 1996).Active antibacterial from pomegranate skin are showed by substances from tannin such as elagitanin and flavonoid (Machado et al., 2003;Wang et al., 2008).

. Anti Diabetic
Diabetes is the most common disease in the world and the number of the patients are today increasing.One way to control diabetes mellitus (DM) is by diet, consuming various fruits especially pomegranate.Finding suggest that pomegranate can prevent diseases and preserve health.Various researches have described the antidiabetic activities of pomegranate (Huang et al., 2005;Li et al., 2005;Katz et al., 2007;Parmar & Kar 2007;Li et al., 2008;Bagri et al.,2009).Katz et al., (2007) reported hypoglicaemic activities from flower, seed and skin of pomegranate.Li et al., (2005) suggested that pomegranate flower extract increases hyperglycemic on type 2 diabetes postprandial and obesity, by inhibiting intestinal α-glukosidase.Huang et al., (2005) showed the potential mechanism from pomegranate flower as antidiabetic which involves activation of PPAR-γ.Parmar (2007) reported that by giving 200 mg/kg of pomegranate skin can normalize all changes caused by aloxan, a substance used to induce DM because it can increase glucose serum level, activity of α-amilase, level of water consumption, lipid peroxidation in the liver, heart, and kidney as well as reducing insulin serum  (Szkudelski, 2001).The main antidiabetic substance in pomegranate is polyphenol which can affect the blood level in two different mechanisms which are inhibiting the glucose absorbtion by the intestine or absorption through perifer tissue (Scalbert et al., 2005).Hypoglicaemic effect of antosianin within 10 mg/kg dose, was observed on maltose as source of glucose (Matsui et al., 2002), this proves that such effect is caused by glucoside inhibition in the intestinal mucuos.Some in vitro studies in cultured cell also shown that polyphenol can increase glucose by perifer tissue, which can lower the sugar level (Scalbert et al., 2005).Furthermore, Shiraishi et al., (2002) & Aviram et al., (2002) explained that by consuming pomegranate juice on daily basis can protect as well as fixing a broken liver and also protecting kidney and prevent heart attack.

. Anti inflammatory and Anti Cancer
Inflammation is the first physiological defense system in the human body which can protect wounds caused by physical harms, toxic, etc.The defense system is also known as short term inflammatory, breaking the infectious microorganisms, remove irritants, and preserving physiological functions.However, in long term can cause dysfunctional such as asthma and rheumatoid arthritis (Lee et al., 2010).Acute inflammatory can effects joints, intestines and can cause cancer (Balkwill et al., 2005).Acute inflammation can cause early changes involved in cancer development through pro inflammatory mediator such TNF-α, interleukin (ex.IL-6 and IL-8), transcription activating factor and lipid bioactive such as eikosanoid (prostaglandin E2 and derivtives products of lipoxigenase) (Lansky et al., 2007).Inflammatory process was triggered by various chemical and biology factors such are pro-inflammatory enzyme, cytokine, eicosanoid, or tissues enzymatic degradations (Dao et al., 2004).Some studies related to cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2) (Cho et al., 2004), isoform of cyclooxygenase (COX), responsible to catalyze arachydonate acid to become prostalglandin which related to inflammatory process.Other isoform is cyclooxygenase 1 (COX-1), which regulates the homeostasis process (Dao et al., 2004).Extract from pomegranate seed oil consists of polyphenol and fatty acid showed that 31-44% persecution on sheep's cyclooxygenase and 69-81% persecution of lipoxygenase on mules, whilst the rind fermented showed that 21-30% lipoksigenase inhibition on mules (Schubert et al., 1999).Polyphenol in seeds oil also reported able to weaken the inflammatory cellular signal towards various colon cancer cells (Adams et al., 2006).Many studies have shown the anti inflammatory properties of pomegranate (Lansky & Newman 2007;Shukla et al., 2008;Larrosa et al., 2010;Lee et al., 2010).
Other information about the benefit of pomegranate is to keep oral hygiene (Kim, 2002), as eye ointments (Bruijn et al., 2003), weight loss soap (Guojian, 1995), and as additional therapy to increase bioavailability of radioactive colourings (Amorim, 2003).Currently, pomegranate as medication and nutritional products have been published by more than 300 new scientific researches related to health effects.Some scientific research have put foundation of the studies based on reliable research for the studies on the usage of traditional medicine from pomegranate (Julie, 2008).

CONCLUSION
According to the findings above, we can conclude that pomegranate as an antioxidant rich fruit, have antibacterial properties, useful for oral hygiene, dermatological disease, improving heart condition, and other medical applications.The antioxidant properties of pomegranate juice is effective to bind free radicals and have better effects compared to other fruit extract.The anti carcinogenic and anti inflammatory properties of pomegranate allows its use in therapy or adjuvant therapy in prevention to some cancer and heart disease.