Selenium-enriched foods and their ingredients: As intervention for the vicious cycle between autophagy and overloaded stress responses in Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract

Dysfunctional autophagy induced by excessive reactive oxygen species (ROS) load and inflammation accelerates the development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Recently, there has been an increasing interest in selenium-enriched ingredients (SEIs), such as selenoproteins, selenoamino acids and selenosugars, which could improve AD through antioxidant and anti-inflammation, as well as autophagy modulating effects. This review indicates that SEIs eliminate excessive ROS by activating the nuclear translocation of nuclear factor erythroid2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) and alleviate inflammation by inhibiting the mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs)/nuclear factor kappa-B (NF-κB) pathway. Furthermore, they can activate the adenosine 5’-monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK)/mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway, and subsequently promote amyloid beta (Aβ) clearance and reduce memory impairments. SEIs are ubiquitous in many plants and microorganisms, such as Brassicaceae vegetables, yeast, and mushroom. Enzymatic hydrolysis, as well as physical processing, such as thermal, high pressure and microwave treatment, are the main techniques to modify the properties of dietary selenium. This work highlights the fact that SEIs can inhibit inflammation and oxidative stress and provides evidence that supports the potential use of these dietary materials to be a novel strategy for improving AD.

Keywords:

• selenium-enriched ingredients
• autophagy
• inflammation
• oxidative stress
• food processing
• Alzheimer’s disease

Author contributions

Mengfei Chen: conceptualization, formal analysis, investigation, writing-original draft, editing, visualization. Zhenjun Zhu, Jumei Zhang and Qingping Wu: formal analysis, writing – review & editing. Aohuan Huang: investigation, discussions. Alaa El-Din Ahmed Bekhit, Juan Wang and Yu Ding: resources, conceptualization, formal analysis, writing – review & editing, visualization, supervision, project administration.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by State Key Laboratory of Applied Microbiology Southern China (SKLAM011-2021), Guangzhou Basic and Applied Basic Research Project (202201010197), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (21621009), Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory (2020B121201009), and Guangdong Province Academy of Sciences Special Project for Capacity Building of Innovation Driven Development (2020GDASYL-20200401002).