The biological potential and health-benefits of flavonoids: A review and development opportunities.

Flavonoids are a class of polyphenolic phytochemicals, representing an important group of secondary metabolites in plants. They can be divided into seven groups, depending on their chemical features, and, in nature, they can be obtained from various sources, primarily plants. Industrially, and due to the biological potential of flavonoids, there has been a notable effort to develop new methodologies that allow for the efficient and eco-friendly production of these compounds. The growing interest in natural products for various applications, such as the nutraceutical and cosmeceutical industries, lends considerable relevance to these compounds as potential functional ingredients. Further, flavonoids are heavily explored because they present relevant biological activities like antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, which could translate into health benefits at multiple levels of the human body, like cardiac function, metabolism-related diseases (e.g., diabetes, obesity), bone preservation, neuroprotection, among others. This review aims to explore the biological potential of flavonoids, clarifying their most relevant health benefits while providing an update on the current state of the art, simultaneously pointing future research directions.