EXPLORATION TECHNOLOGY OF POLYSACCHARIDES WITH ANTIDIARRHEAL ACTIVITY

The present prospective study we aimed to carry out a survey on biological activities already described for polysaccharides, with special focus on its possible applications in diarrhea. For this, we made a survey of patent documents on databases USPTO, EPO, WIPO and INPI, as well as scientific articles in PubMed, Web of ScienceTM, Scopus and Scielo, using specific keywords and boolean operators, always used in the search field for the abstract / title of the files. Thus, it was found in international databases patent a large number of documents relating to the use of polysaccharides in several thematic areas, particularly chemical, pharmaceutical, food and cosmetic industry, with remarkable dominance of the United States and China over applications for patents, but with relatively low number of documents regarding the description of any antidiarrheal action of polysaccharides, which reinforces the innovative nature of the research involving the use of polysaccharides as anti-diarrheal agents. Furthermore, in general, the databases for scientific literature in articles, it was observed that the focus of studies involving polysaccharides are mainly connected to the extraction, identification and biochemical characterization of these compounds, industrial application, and description of its biological activity nutritional importance. However, the association with the word diarrhea resulted in a reduced number of articles, showing that there are great opportunities for research involving the description of the antidiarrheal activity of polysaccharides from various natural sources.