Aged Garlic Extract and Its Bioactive Molecules S-Ally-Cysteine and S1-Propenl-Cysteine: A Review Focusing on Evidences Sup-Porting Their Use for Mitigating the Effects of Cigarette Smoking

One of the major social issues worldwide is the tobacco dependency and the cigarette smoking (CS) abuse. Given the significant impact of cigarette smoking on human health and disease, exten-sive tobacco use and cigarette smoking abuse are certainly a form of drug addiction and should be considered a serious threat to human health. Notably, healthcare spending attributable to cig-arette smoking is very high. In this regard, a significant number of biomolecules of natural origin have been described as capable of mitigating the adverse effects of cigarette smoking. In this re-view (a) we discuss the impact that the habit of smoking tobacco has on human health and (b) we describe products of natural origin capable of mitigating the cigarette smoke effects. The conclusion of this review article is that the available information strongly sustains a possible use of the anti-inflammatory aged garlic extract (AGE) and its bioactive components for mitigating the detrimental effects of cigarette smoke on human tissues. The key reasons for proposing this appli-cation are that AGE and its key components are potent anti-inflammatory agents, bind Toll-like Receptor-4, inhibit Nuclear Factor-B, inhibit the expression of pro-inflammatory genes, revert apoptosis induced by cigarette smoke in several cellular model systems and are strong inhibitors of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) formation.