Nutritional intervention study of berries consumption

Berries are described as being an important source of antioxidants. These compounds may protect our body against damage caused by reactive oxygen species, which are involved in diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. Therefore, we intend to characterize the benefit that these fruits have in the human body, particularly blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, Portuguese crowberry and strawberry tree fruits.

There is still little information about the stability and bioavailability of the ingested compounds present in berries, namely antioxidants. So, it is important to determine which compounds will survive to the digestive process, which chemical alterations they suffer and which are better absorbed and have the ability to reach target tissues inside the human body.

The study proposed by Disease and Stress Biology Lab team, from Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica, proposes to identify the bioavailable compounds of berries. This will be accomplished through an intervention study that will be performed in collaboration with the Faculty of Pharmacy at University of Lisbon and the University of Leeds (UK).

In this study the volunteers will consume a juice of a berries mixture and later on blood and urine samples will be collected at several time points. The samples will be characterized for several important physiological parameters, namely redox status. With the information gathered in this study we intend to understand how the consumption of these fruits will exert a positive effect in our health.
The selected volunteers will be followed by a nutrition team which will conduct an interview to determine the clinical history and measure their anthropometric parameters. Blood analysis will also be performed to define volunteers’ health status. It is important to note that the health of the volunteers will not be affected by this study.
During the intervention study volunteers will have to follow a controlled diet prescribed by a nutritionist who will also provide valuable information for volunteers’ diet improvement.

Would you like to participate in our study?

We would like to acknowledge to the physician Dr. Maria Helena Santos for her assistance during this intervention study