Anti-inflammatory effects of isoflavone powder produced from soybean cake.

Soybean cake, a byproduct obtained during the processing of soybean oil, has been shown to be a rich source of isoflavones. The objectives of this study were to use soybean cake as raw material for processing into powder and to evaluate the anti-inflammatory activity. Eleven treatments, including powders of malonylglucoside, glucoside, acetylglucoside, aglycone, ISO-1, and ISO-2, as well as genistein standard, gamma-PGA, control, normal, and PDTC, were used for evaluation. A total of 77 mice were each provided daily with tube feeding for 4 weeks at a dose of 0.3 mL of aqueous solution from each treatment, and inflammation was induced with intraperitoneal injection of 1 mg/kg of body weight lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Results showed that all of the isoflavone powders and genistein standard were effective in inhibiting LPS-induced inflammation, lowering leukocyte number in mice blood and reducing production of IL-1beta, IL-6, NO, and PGE2 in both peritoneal exudate cell supernatant and peritoneal exudate fluid. All of the isoflavone treatments failed to retard T cell proliferation; however, both ISO-1 and ISO-2 could inhibit B cell proliferation. The difference in anti-inflammatory activity was minor between any of the isoflavone treatments.