Seaweeds: A Comprehensive Review of Pharmacological Interests

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Photo by Pahala Basuki on Unsplash

Photo by Pahala Basuki on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Seaweeds are well-known for their exceptional capacity to accumulate essential minerals and trace elements needed for human nutrition, although their levels are commonly very variable de-pending on their morphological features, environmental conditions, and geographic location. Food security, legislative measures to ensure monitoring and labeling of food products are needed. Being subject to environmental influences from its habitat, sea-weeds also entail water-borne health risks such as organic pollutants, toxins, parasites, and heavy metals. Having in mind the serious environmental problems raised in coastal areas by urbanization and industrialization, the concentration of toxic elements in edible macro-algae is now a growing concern, mainly considering their increment in Western diet. Although many studies demonstrated their therapeutic value in various ailments but most of them performed on experimental animals. Proper labeling is necessary along with instruction of content, source and use. Further-more, controlled human intervention studies with health-related end points to elucidate therapeutic efficacy are required.