Capsaicin has known health beneficial and therapeutic properties. It is also able to enhance the permeability of drugs across epithelial tissues. Unfortunately, due to its pungency the oral administration of capsaicin is limited. To this end, we assessed the effect of nanoencapsulation of capsaicin, under the hypothesis that this would reduce its pungency. Core-shell nanocapsules with an oily c...

Capsaicin, a natural product of the Capsicum species of red peppers, is known to induce apoptosis and suppress growth. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug-activated gene-1 (NAG-1) is a cytokine associated with pro-apoptotic and antitumorigenic property in colorectal and lung cancer. Our data demonstrate that capsaicin leads to induction of apoptosis and up-regulates NAG-1 gene expression at th...

Background Pulpal pain is one of the most common and severe orofacial pain conditions with considerable adverse effects on physiological processes including learning and memory. Regular exercise is known to be effective on cognitive function as well as pain processing in the central nervous system. Here, the possible effects of regular exercise on pulpal pain response as well as pain-induced ch...

In the present study, we used functional MRI in awake rats to investigate the pain response that accompanies intradermal injection of capsaicin into the hindpaw. To this end, we used BOLD imaging together with a 3D segmented, annotated rat atlas and computational analysis to identify the integrated neural circuits involved in capsaicin-induced pain. The specificity of the pain response to capsa...

Obesity is a global health problem that requires the utmost attention. Apart from other factors the trans-differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) into adipocytes is an added detrimental factor causing the intensification of obesity. The main objective of this present study is to analyse whether capsaicin is capable of inhibiting the differentiation of BMSCs to adipocytes. Bone marrow m...

On the basis of the ability of capsaicin to activate the transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 receptor (TRPV1) expressed in nociceptive sensory neurons, topical and injectable high-concentration formulations are being developed as potential treatments for various pain syndromes. As much of the published literature on capsaicin is based on pepper extracts, which are typically a mixture of ca...

Capsaicin is the major pungent ingredient in red peppers which is world widely consumed. Except its potent pain relieving efficacy as reported, capsaicin also exerted its antitumor activity in several tumor models. Here, we reported that capsaicin had a profound anti-proliferative effect on human colon cancer cells via inducing cell cycle G0/G1 phase arrest and apoptosis, which was associated w...

BACKGROUND Body temperature is usually regulated by opposing controls of heat production and heat loss. However, systemic administration of capsaicin, the pungent ingredient of hot peppers, facilitated heat production and heat loss simultaneously in rats. We recently found that the capsaicin-induced heat loss and heat production occur simultaneously and that the biphasic change in body temperat...

In this review, we discuss the importance of capsaicin to the current understanding of neuronal modulation of pain and explore the mechanisms of capsaicin-induced pain. We will focus on the analgesic effects of capsaicin and its clinical applicability in treating pain. Furthermore, we will draw attention to the rationale for other clinical therapeutic uses and implications of capsaicin in disea...

Capsaicin is a major biologically active ingredient of chili peppers. Extensive studies indicate that capsaicin is a cancer-suppressing agent via blocking the activities of several signal transduction pathways including nuclear factor-kappaB, activator protein-1 and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3. However, there is little study on the effect of capsaicin on pancreatic carcin...