Following Hippocrates' advice 'Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food': an alternative method for evaluation of the immunostimulatory potential of food proteins.

摘要

It is so determined by Nature that right from the beginning everyone's life (at least for a certain period of time) depends on a strict fulfilment of the Hippocrates' saying. The milk supplied by our mothers is rich in bioactive substances (mostly of prote-inous origin) beneficial to health. Some peptide sequences hidden in milk protein structures are considered to be of special importance. Other dietary {animal and/or plant) proteins that we receive after having been fed on milk are known to contain similar peptide sequences. Bioactive peptides encrypted in food protein molecules remain inactive until liberated in the digestive tract by proteolytic enzymes. Once liberated these peptides carry out a wide range of functions (antimicrobial, immunostimulatory, antihypertensive, etc.) (see for reviews).