Health and Food Safety.

The dietary exposure to endocrine active substances concerns the general population, which includes a conspicuous fraction of subjects who undergo prolonged or continuous pharmacological treatment(s). Recently an important issue has surfaced to the attention of public opinion: chemicals present in citrus fruits, and above all in grapefruit, with the potential to interfere with drug metabolism, increasing the risk of serious side effects. It’s a matter of metabolic potentiation, which enhances the bioavailability of molecules that-usually- undergo a high intestinal metabolism by the enzyme CYP 3A4 of the cytochrome P450 family, critical for metabolism of both endogenous and exogenous compounds. Involved drugs include antiarrhythmics agents, immunosuppressive agents, statins and calcium channel blockers. (Stump et al., 2006). A number of furanocoumarins, naturally present in citrus fruits, have been found to inhibit CYP3A4 activity (Row et al., 2006). Furanocoumarins, and other compounds in citrus fruits, interact with the expression and activity of aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) (Baumgart et al., 2005; Van Ede et al., 2008). The interaction with AhR, a specific target for dioxins and polycyclic aromati