BACKGROUND Spirulina is a commercial alga well known to contain various antioxidants, especially phycocyanin. Apart from being sold as a nutraceutical, Spirulina is incorporated as a functional ingredient in food products and beverages. Most of the previous reports on antioxidant activity of Spirulina were based on chemical rather than cell-based assays. The primary objective of this study was ...

The cyanobacterium Arthrospira is among the most well-known food supplements worldwide known as "Spirulina." While it is a widely recognized health-promoting natural product, there are no reports on the molecular diversity of commercially available brands of "Spirulina" supplements and the occurrence of other cyanobacterial and heterotrophic bacterial microorganisms in these products. In this s...

Spirulina platensis trichomes grown in Zarrouks medium having total Na+ concentration as 0.14 M when transferred to fresh Zarrouks medium containing enhanced level of Na+ ions equal to 0.86 M showed 30% more accumulation of Na+ intracellularly as compared to the control. An inhibition of photosystem II activity to almost 66% was observed. Also due to this exposure to high Na+, the room temperat...

BACKGROUND Current breath tests for measurement of gastric emptying of solids are expensive, possibly inaccurate, and require cumbersome calculations. AIMS We wished to validate a simplified solid gastric emptying test using a [(13)C]Spirulina platensis breath test for accurate results relative to scintigraphy. SUBJECTS Thirty healthy volunteers. METHODS We measured gastric emptying of eg...