Many species of Myrtaceae are cultivated in home gardens throughout the tropics for their edible fruit, and have been used in traditional medicine to treat several inflammatory conditions. Fruit phenolics are important dietary antioxidant and anti-inflammatory constituents. We have investigated the antiradical activity, total phenolic content (TPC), and total anthocyanin content (TAC) of 14 underutilized Myrtaceae fruits, namely Eugenia aggregata, E. brasiliensis, E. luschnathiana, E. reinwardtiana, Myrciaria cauliflora, M. dubia, M. vexator, Syzygium cumini, S. curranii, S. jambos, S. javanicum, S. malaccense, S. samarangense, and S. samarangense var.Taiwan pink. An HPLC-PDA method was developed to quantify the amounts of cyanidin 3-glucoside (1), delphinidin 3-glucoside (2), ellagic acid (3), kaempferol (4), myricetin (5), quercetin (6), quercitrin (7), and rutin (8) present in MeOH extracts of the fruit. TPC ranged from 3.57 to 101 mg/g, TAC ranged from undetectable to 12.1 mg/g, and antiradical activity, measured as DPPH˙ IC 50 , ranged from very active (19.4 μg/ml) to inactive (389 μg/ml).

Using a population-based approach, the incidence and prevalence of treated achalasia is 1.63/100,000 and 10.82/100,000, respectively. The disease appears to have a stable incidence but a rising prevalence. Survival of achalasia cases is significantly less than age-matched healthy controls.

Black cohosh (Actaea racemosa L., syn. Cimicifuga racemosa L.) has become increasingly popular as a dietary supplement in the United States for the treatment of symptoms related to menopause, but the botanical authenticity of most products containing black cohosh has not been evaluated, nor is manufacturing highly regulated in the United States. In this study, 11 black cohosh products were analyzed for triterpene glycosides, phenolic constituents, and formononetin by high-performance liquid chromatography-photodiode array detection and a new selected ion monitoring liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry method. Three of the 11 products were found to contain the marker compound cimifugin and not cimiracemoside C, thereby indicating that these plants contain Asian Actaea instead of black cohosh. One product contained both black cohosh and an Asian Actaea species. For the products containing only black cohosh, there was significant product-to-product variability in the amounts of the selected triterpene glycosides and phenolic constituents, and as expected, no formononetin was detected.