Arq. Bras. Cardiol. 2023; 120(1): e20220906

Beetroot Juice May Be a Dietary Ingredient to Protect Vascular Endothelium

Roberto J. S. Franco

DOI: 10.36660/abc.20220906

This Short Editorial is referred by the Research article "Acute Effects of Dietary Nitrate on Central Pressure and Endothelial Function in Hypertensive Patients: A Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Crossover Study".

The first Dietary Recommendations originated in 1941 by order of President Franklin Roosevelt, when he convened the “National Conference on Nutrition in Defense” to guarantee a population fit for war, minimizing diseases due to deficiency of nutrients.In the same year, the American Medical Association declared that “nutrition research should be encouraged” with primary objectives of “estimating the amounts of essential nutrients in foods,” “detection of nutritional deficiency states,” and more precise determination of “optimal and minimum requirements” for each nutrient.

In humans, after absorption through the stomach wall, 25% of the nitrate consumed enters the entero-salivary circulation, where it is reduced to nitrite (NO₂) by bacterial nitrate reductases of facultative anaerobes on the dorsal surface of the tongue. ^, This nitrite is swallowed and, in the stomach’s acidic environment, is reduced to nitric oxide (NO) or re-enters the circulation as nitrite. Thus, dietary nitrate may represent an intravascular source of the pleiotropic vasoprotective molecule NO and acts as a potent dilator of blood pressure and delays atherogenesis by inhibiting the recruitment of inflammatory cells and platelet aggregation. Thus, protecting the vascular endothelium influences numerous cardiovascular pathologies (prehypertension, hypertension, atherosclerosis, and stroke) associated with endothelial dysfunction and decreased NO bioactivity. Recently, studies have shown that nitrite confers marked protection against ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury to the myocardium, kidney, lung, and cerebral vasculature. ^,

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