Abstract
To establish cheese as a dairy product with health benefits, we designed to investigate whether different types of commercial cow milk cheeses may possess regulatory effect on the immune response, using RAW264.7 mouse macrophage-like cells as an immune cell model. Among 21 cheese extracts tested, all the cheese samples induced nitric oxide (NO) generation in RAW264.7 cells, in a different manner (ca. 3 to 6-fold higher than control). In addition, five varieties of blue cheese ripened for 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 months demonstrated that the blue cheese ripened for a short term was capable of showing the relatively strong induction on the NO generation in RAW264.7 cells. Collectively, these results suggest cheese may have a potential role on the up-regulation of NO-related immune function.
