Algal polysaccharides and health

Freshwater and marine algae cover a wide group of various organisms living in diversified, terrestrial, or water habitats. Various environment conditions are important factors for the formation of many defense mechanisms to survive unfavorable climate leading to a wide scale of chemical compounds created by algae. Many of them show interesting and important biological activities with health benefits, which are the reason of algae being in the focus of scientists worldwide. Generally, algae can be considered as an abundant source of many nutrients, besides the polysaccharides, responsible for their different physicochemical properties with health beneficial effects. Fundamental seaweed polysaccharides with economic impact are presented by alginates, agars, carrageenans, ulvanes, and fucoidans used as a raw material mostly in the food and pharmaceutical industry. From medicinal point of view, especially sulfate polysaccharides are an important source of bioactive natural compounds exhibiting anticoagulant, antithrombotic, antitumor, antimicrobial, antimutagenic, anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory, and antiviral activities. Thus, significant attention of this chapter has been focused on sulfate polysaccharides derived from algae with anticoagulant activities. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015