Piperine: An Alkaloid from Piper Species with a Wide Range of Therapeutic Properties

Based on the usefulness and importance among the spices, black pepper (Piper nigrum L.) is commonly referred to as “The King of Spices”. It is valued for its flavor, aroma, nutritional, and medicinal uses. The value of pepper is owed to its pungency and flavor, which is attributed to the presence of a naturally occurring alkaloid known as piperine. The amount of piperine varies in plants belonging to the Piperaceae family; it constitutes 2% to 7.4% of both black pepper and white pepper. It has been confirmed from the scientific studies that piperine has many bioactive effects, such as antimicrobial action, as well as many physiological effects that can contribute to general human health, including immunomodulatory, hepatoprotective, antioxidant, antitumor, and many other activities. Clinical studies demonstrated remarkable antioxidant, antitumor, and drug availability-enhancing characteristics of this compound, together with immunomodulatory potential. All these properties showed the therapeutic potentials of piperine and the need to incorporate this compound into general health-enhancing medical formulations, as well as into those that would be used as adjunctive therapy in order to enhance the bioavailability of various therapeutic drugs. The present chapter accounts for an overview of the therapeutic properties of piperine, the bioactive constituent of pepper. It also focuses on methods used to extract piperine from pepper along with recent approaches for the enhancement of the bioavailability of piperine.

Keywords: Alkaloid, Antioxidant, Bioavailability, Immunomodulatory, Piperine.