A manufacturer of acai products states on its website that acai has three times the antioxidant strength of blueberries and eight times that of strawberries. The likely source of such unusual antioxidant power would come from the dark blue pigments found in acai berry skin-the large class of flavonoids called anthocyanins and particularly from two (cyanidin-3-glucoside and cyanidin-3-rutinoside), which are the main pigments isolated from acai. Acai has an exceptional content of fats, including oleic acid (56.2% of total),palmitic acid (24.1% of total), and linoleic acid (12.5% of total),[ and also contains a high amount of beta-sitosterol (78-91% of total sterols).



These oil compartments in acai fruit harbor dense contents of polyphenols such as procyanidin oligmers and vanillic acid, syringic acid, p-hydroxybenzoic acid, protocatechuic acid, and ferulic acid which were shown to degrade substantially during storage or exposure to heat. The CAP-e assay uses red blood cells (erythrocytes). Many natural products contain compounds that may provoke cellular signaling in other, more complex cell types. Red blood cells(RBC) do not engage in complex inflammatory reactions and are not capable of producing reactive oxygen species (ROS) as a result of stress or death. Furthermore, unlike all other cells, RBCs do not contain mitochondria. Mitochondria engage in the production of ROS, which are pro-oxidant compounds.

Testing the antioxidant capacity in a RBC model eliminates confounding factors that in other cellular models makes data interpretation difficult. Caffeine is found in varying quantities in the beans, leaves, and fruit of over 60 plants, where it acts as a natural pesticide that paralyzes and kills certain insects feeding on the plants. It is most commonly consumed by humans in infusions extracted from the beans of the coffee plant and the leaves of the tea bush, as well as from various foods and drinks containing products derived from the kola nut or from cacao. Other sources include yerba mate, guarana berries, and the Yaupon Holly.

The sequential use of several methods serves to bridge analytical and biological testing methods.For example, if a product is suspected to contain antioxidants, analytical chemistry methods, such as ORAC, can be used to verify the presence of antioxidants. Subsequently, the CAP-e assay can be used to assess whether these antioxidants can enter and protect living cells. Then, various complex cellular models can be applied to test for immunomodulatory effects. The data from the CAP-e assay serves an important role in this sequence and allows for a more definitive analysis of data from more complex cellular assays.

Miscarriage or spontaneous abortion is the natural or spontaneous end of a pregnancy at a stage where the embryo or fetus is incapable of surviving, generally defined in humans at prior to 20 weeks of gestation. Miscarriage is the most common complication of early pregnancy. The medical term spontaneous abortion is used in reference to miscarriages because the medical term abortion refers to any terminated pregnancy, deliberately induced or spontaneous, although in common parlance it refers specifically to active termination of pregnancy.

Most clinically apparent miscarriages (two thirds to three-quarters in various studies) occur during the first trimester. Chromosomal abnormalities are found in more than half of embryos miscarried in the first 13 weeks. A pregnancy with a genetic problem has a 95% chance of ending in miscarriage. Most chromosomal problems happen by chance, have nothing to do with the parents, and are unlikely to recur.Genetic problems are more likely to occur with older parents; this may account for the higher miscarriage rates observed in older women.

Progesterone is a C-21 steroid hormone involved in the female menstrual cycle, pregnancy (supports gestation) and embryogenesis of humans and other species. Progesterone belongs to a class of hormones called progestogens, and is the major naturally occurring human progestogen. A further problem is that isolates often work differently than the original natural products which have synergies and may combine, say, antimicrobial compounds with compounds that stimulate various pathways of the immune system.

Many higher plants contain novel metabolites with antimicrobial and antiviral properties. However, in the developed world almost all clinically used chemotherapeutics have been produced by in vitro chemical synthesis. Exceptions, like taxol and vincristine, were structurally complex metabolites that were difficult to synthesize in vitro. Many non-natural, synthetic drugs cause severe side effects that were not acceptable except as treatments of last resort for terminal diseases such as cancer. The metabolites discovered in medicinal plants may avoid the side effect of synthetic drugs, because they must accumulate within living cells.