UK heather honey shows strong anti-inflammatory activity in macrophage cells following in vitro digestion

Honey is regarded as a functional food with excellent health promoting properties related to the botanical origins. Indeed, heather honeys are rich sources of bioactive compounds which have shown immunomodulatory potential. In this study the anti-inflammatory activity of nine heather and two non-heather honeys following in vitro digestion was evaluated using lipopolysaccharides (LPS) stressed macrophages. Most of the digested honey samples (8 out of 11) showed the ability to reduce nitric oxide at 11 - 32% inhibition, with four samples causing significant (p < 0.05) suppression of cytokines (19% - 48%). Moreover, all digested honey samples showed impressive antioxidant ability, reducing ROS production (p < 0.001) to 27 ± 1% relative to LPS treated cells. Additionally, high content screening revealed treatments which induced significant structural changes to the nuclei and mitochondria. Thus, this study serves as an excellent basis for future investigations to explore bioactive pathways of digested honey samples.