CURCUMIN NANOFORMULATIONS AND THEIR THERAPEUTIC APPLICABILITY TO DEPRESSIVE DISORDER

Abstract

Depressive disorder is one of the most prevalent multifactorial psychiatric syndromes, recognized as a global public health problem. Recent research with the nanostructured systems of curcumin has aroused the interest of the scientific community, for emerging neuroprotective effects with potential applicability in biological systems. Curcumin is a natural substance, considered for therapy in various diseases, including neuropsychiatric such as depressive disorder. This is a systematic review, with articles published in PubMed, Scielo and Science Direct, filtered from 2014-2021. The inclusion criteria started from a guiding question, combined with the DeSs indexes for the search: depression, curcumin, nanoparticles, antidepressant agent, linked to Boolean operators to combine the terms of your search and the StArt system to exclude duplicates. Twenty-two articles were included, and approximately 60-70% of them showed some therapeutic potential of reduced curcumin in nanoformulation applicable to the biological system. It was possible to verify that nanostructured curcumin exhibits differentiated properties that increase antioxidant and antidepressant action and low cytotoxicity. Its therapeutic potential is able to interfere in neuro-inflammatory processes. The perspective is the development of drugs with controlled delivery of bioactive such as curcumin, with multiple organic functions. The increased bioavailability of curcumin may promote neurogenesis in the cortico-hippocampal region and function as adjuvants in antidepressant treatment.