Sialic acid-based strategies for the prevention and treatment of Helicobacter pylori infection: Emerging trends in food industry

Abstract

Approximately 50% of the world population is infected with Helicobacter pylori. Antibiotics are widely used for H. pylori infection treatment but there are drawbacks, e.g., the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Sialic acids are a family of acylated derivatives of a nine-carbon carboxylated monosaccharide. Because sialic acid of the host cells is vital to H. pylori pathogenesis, sialic acid-guided therapies have been proposed for the prevention and treatment of H. pylori infection, including anti-adhesive therapy and site-specific delivery. This review aims to shed light on the prospects of sialic acid-based strategies in the food industry for developing functional foods with potent anti-H. pylori activity. In this work, progress on the identification of sialic acid-containing components as anti-adhesive agents against H. pylori is reviewed. The current applications of sialic acid-based delivery systems in eradicating H. pylori are discussed, including microspheres, beads, hydrogels, and nanoparticles. The challenges and future perspectives of sialic acid-guided strategies and the possibility of their applications in food industry are highlighted. Antibiotic resistance is still a major challenge and the sialic acid-based technologies have tremendous potential to be utilized to develop functional foods that hold promise to be a future trend for preventing or treating H. pylori infection.

Keywords:

• Sialic acid
• Helicobacter pylori
• anti-adhesive therapy
• chitosan
• mucoadhesive delivery system
• functional food

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Sun was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Postdoctoral Fellowship and research grants from the Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province of China (grant number: LC2018014), Foundation for the Characteristic Discipline of Processing Technology of Plant Foods (grant numbers: YSTSXK201811 and LTSW201720), and Creative Talents Training Program of Heilongjiang Province (grant number: UNPYSCT-2018105). C.C. Udenigwe received funding from the NSERC Discovery Grant Program (reference number RGPIN-2018-06839).