Effectiveness of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids against microbial pathogens

Abstract

Microorganisms provide both beneficial and harmful effects to human beings. Beneficial effects come from the symbiotic relationship that exists between humans and microbiota, but then several human illnesses have turned some friendly microbes into opportunistic pathogens, causing several microbial-related diseases. Various efforts have been made to create and utilize antimicrobial agents in the treatment and prevention of these infections, but such efforts have been hampered by the emergence of antimicrobial resistance. Despite extensive studies on drug discovery to alleviate this problem, issues with the toxicity and tolerance of certain compounds and continuous microbial evolution have forced researchers to focus on screening various phytochemical dietary compounds for antimicrobial activity. Linolenic acid and its derivatives (eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid) are omega-3 fatty acids that have been studied due to their role in human health, being important for the brain, the eye, the cardiovascular system, and general human growth. However, their utilization as antimicrobial agents has not been widely appreciated, perhaps due to a lack of understanding of antimicrobial mechanisms, toxicity, and route of administration. Therefore, this review focuses on the efficacy, mechanism, and toxicity of omega-3 fatty acids as alternative therapeutic agents for treating and preventing diseases associated with pathogenic microorganisms.

Keywords: Linolenic acid; Omega-3 fatty acid; Eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA); Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA); Antimicrobial agent; Fatty acid.

Conflict of interest statement

Compliance with ethics guidelines: Warren CHANDA, Thomson P. JOSEPH, Xue-fang GUO, Wen-dong WANG, Min LIU, Miza S. VUAI, Arshad A. PADHIAR, and Min-tao ZHONG declare that they have no conflict of interest.

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

Figures

Fig. 1

Metabolism of linolenic acid to docosahexaenoic acid Linolenic acid is firstly desaturated at carbon 6, then elongated and desaturated at carbon 5, followed by a couple of elongation processes, a final desaturation at carbon 6 and then removal of the two added carbons through fatty acid β-oxidation to produce DHA. LNA: linolenic acid; SDA: stearidonic acid; ETA: eicosatetraenoic acid; EPA: eicosapentaenoic acid; DPA: docosapentaenoic acid; TPA: tetracosapentaenoic acid; THA: tetracosahexaenoic acid; DHA: docosahexaenoic acid. The schematic drawing was prepared with ChemBioDraw Ultra 14.0 software