REVIEW article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition and Food Science Technology
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1637053
Pharmacological actions and applications of safflower flavonoids
Provisionally accepted
- Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.), also known as Honghua, blueflower, or prickly safflower, is a medicinal herb effective in promoting blood circulation, dredging meridians, eliminating blood stasis, and relieving pain. Safflower contains complex chemical components, including flavonoids, alkaloids, organic acids, pigments, etc. Among them, flavonoids such as chalcone compounds, quercetin, rutin, and kaempferol serve as the material basis for the pharmacological effects of safflower. Flavonoids in safflower exhibit diverse biological activities, including cardiovascular and cerebrovascular protection, antioxidant, neuroprotective, antitumor, anti-inflammatory, and immunomodulatory effects. Additionally, they show great potential in gynecological diseases, food production, and other fields. With extensive research by scholars on the active mechanisms and targets of safflower flavonoids, their application prospects in the medical field have been found to be extremely broad.This review used keywords such as "Carthamus tinctorius L.", "safflower", "flavonoids", "therapeutic effect", "mechanism", "application", etc., to search relevant studies up to January 2025 in multiple internationally recognized databases (including PubMed, Web of Science, CNKI, Wan fang, Sci Finder, Elsevier, cnipa), finally including 145 high-quality studies. Representative images were drawn using Biorender and ChemDraw software to focus on presenting the action mechanisms and targets of safflower flavonoids. This article systematically reviews the pharmacological effects of safflower flavonoids and their applications in various fields in recent years, aiming to provide theoretical guidance and scientific basis for the comprehensive utilization of safflower resources and further research.
Keywords: Carthamus tinctorius L., safflower, Flavonoids, pharmacological action, Mechanism, applications
Received: 28 May 2025; Accepted: 17 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ren, Tan, Hu, Rao, Xiang, Wen, Chen and Peng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yan Chen, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.