## 2 Pomergnate Health-Promoting Properties  
### Antioxidant Activity  
Reactive oxygen species (ROS), formed in normal cellular metabolic processes or generated from exposure to ionizing or xenobiotic radiation, are held concausal factors in a large amount of chronic diseases. The toxicity of ROS is attributable to the ability of damaging essential biological substrates, such as DNA, RNA, proteins, and membrane lipids. ROS comprise superoxide radicals, lipoperoxide oxides, hydrogen peroxide, and hydroxyl free radicals [8]. An antioxidant is generally defined as a natural (fruit and vegetables) or artificial substance that can neutralize or protect a biological system from free radicals, such as oxygen, nitrogen, and lipid radicals [9; 10]. These antioxidant properties make fruit and vegetables elements with good health properties, avoiding or decreasing the risk of suffering from determined degenerative diseases [11; 12; 13; 14; 15; 16; 17; 18]. Anthocyanins, phenols [19], and vitamins as A (14), C (15), and E (16) [20] confer the high antioxidant power to pomergnate as reported by several authors in both in vitro and in vivo models [21]. Some authors [22] state that the antioxidant capacity of phenolic compounds is a consequence of their ability to capture free radicals and their chelating ability of metal cations. [PERSON] et al. [23] reported that the antioxidant effect possessed by pomergnate juice is 3 times higher than that of red wine or green tea and 2, 6, and 8 times superior than that found in red berries, grapeffruit, and orange juice, respectively. In 2013, a parallelism of total phenolic content and antioxidant properties between several extraction solvents of pomergnate seed (PS) and pomergnate defatted seed (PDS) was carried out. Data revealed this trend, in decreasing order, for the used solvents regarding the radical scavenging activity methanol \(>\) water \(>\) acetone \(>\) butanol \(>\) ethyl acetate \(>\) hexane (EC\({}_{50}\) antiradical potential amounting to 0.14 for PS and 0.19 \(\upmu\)g/g for PDS). Similarly, the reducing activity test, decreed that methanol extract of PS an PDS possessed the greater reducing strength [24]. [PERSON] et al. in 2018 investigated the antioxidant activity and the total phenolic content of pomegranate peels, juice, and seeds from three regions of Natanz, Shahreza, and Doorak using as solvent ethanol. The best antioxidant activity was obtained by Doorak's seed and peel, as well as for the higher total phenolic content [25]. More recently, the analysis of five pomegranate juices genotypes (_Mollar_, _Kingdom_, _Dente di Cavallo_, and two old populations _Francofonte_ and _Santa Tecla_) assessed that the total phenolic content ranged between 741.9 \(\pm\) 55.8 and 424.2 \(\pm\) 47.5 mg GAE/100 mL and the _Francoforte_ genotype exhibited the higher amount. Furthermore, twenty-three phenolic compounds were detected. In particular, cyanidin-3,5-O-diglucoside and pellargonidin-3,5-O-diglucoside were the kind of anthocyanins present in all genotypes; the _Santa Tecla_ population possessed the richest amount of these anthocyanins with values of 97.64 and 40.29 mgL\({}^{-1}\), respectively, whereas in the _Francoforte_ population, ferulic acid hexoside was the most abundant compound (391.18 mgL\({}^{-1}\)). The antioxidant activity values ranged between 221.5 and 36.73 mol Trolox equivalents/100 mL of juice and the higher one was observed for the _Santa Tecla_ pomegranate population [26]. Preliminary studies performed by [PERSON] et al. explored the possible beneficial properties of pomegranate peel extracts (PPE) on bovine mammary epithelial cells BME-UV1. Their outcomes evidenced the ability of peel extract to decrease ROS production and malondialdehydedehyde induced by the presence of hydrogen peroxide or lipopolysaccharide. Furthermore, PPE lowered pro-inflammatory cytokines expressions, exhibiting an anti-inflammatory effect on BME-UV1 treated with lipopolysaccharide [27]. A new and interesting study conducted by [PERSON] et al.