Celery, green peppers may help brain

URBANA, Ill., May 21 (UPI) -- University of Illinois researchers report a compound found in celery and green peppers can disrupt a component of the inflammatory response in the brain.

Rodney Johnson of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and graduate student Saebyeol Jang found that a plant flavonoid, luteolin, inhibited a key pathway in the inflammatory response of microglia -- brain cells key to the body's immune defense.

The findings have implications for research on aging and diseases such as Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis, Johnson says.

Jang studied the inflammatory response in microglial cells and found those exposed to luteolin showed a significantly diminished inflammatory response. Jang showed that luteolin was shutting down production of interleukin-6 -- used in cellular communication -- in the inflammatory pathway by as much as 90 percent.

"This was just about as potent an inhibition as anything we had seen previously," Johnson says in a statement.

The study appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.