Nattokinase as a functional food ingredient: therapeutic applications and mechanisms in age-related diseases

The most expansive of this library’s nattokinase reviews, this one stretches the enzyme’s claims across the whole landscape of aging — cardiovascular, neurological, inflammatory, and metabolic disease.

The mechanisms catalogued are wide: antithrombotic and fibrinolytic activity, blood-pressure lowering via ACE inhibition, anti-atherosclerotic and anti-inflammatory effects, and even amyloid degradation relevant to neurodegeneration. The framing is nattokinase as a multi-target “functional food” for the diseases of age.

The practical takeaway is appropriately hedged by the authors themselves: multi-target potential, but limited clinical evidence and a need for rigorous trials before any of it guides care. The status-quo angle is the recurring one — a natural, unpatentable agent versus conventional pharmaceuticals.

We rate the evidence moderate in breadth but limited in rigor: 107 references, but a narrative review without systematic methodology and prone to favorable source selection. Its clinical significance is modest — the sweeping anti-aging framing runs well ahead of the human evidence. Like the other enthusiastic nattokinase reviews here, it’s best read as a catalog of hypotheses, with the rigorous meta-analysis (Li et al., 2023) as the reality check.