Fruit d’Or is testing for anti-adhesion activity, and believes you should too

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Fruit d’Or Nutraceuticals (Villeroy, Quebec, Canada) is making the case for anti-adhesion activity (AAA) testing in addition to measuring PAC’s in cranberry ingredients to ensure efficacy against UTI-causing pathogenic bacteria. As such, the firm is subjecting every lot of its Cran Naturelle and Cran d’Or ingredient to AAA testing. While testing for PAC’s is an important part of quality control, says Stephen Lukawski, director of Sales and Business Development for Fruit d’Or, in a press release, incorrect or out of date testing methods can be fooled by foreign contaminants, such as grape skin or green tea.

Fruit d’Or’s branded ingredients are tested using anti-adhesion assays by Amy B. Howell, PhD, and her team at Rutgers University. These assays have demonstrated that cranberry PACs may inhibit pathogenic E. coli’s ability to adhere to epithelial cells in the urinary tract. In addition, Complete Phytochemical Solutions captured electron microscopic images of cranberry PACs bound to the pathogenic E. coli, showing how anti-adhesion works.

“The significance of anti-adhesion testing is that you want to be able to demonstrate that the compounds in a product actually have a biological effect,” explains Christian Krueger, CEO of Complete Phytochemical Solutions, in a press release. “For instance, we know there is a potential of adulteration being able to fool certain chemical tests. But it would not fool a biological test because the cranberry’s unique structures are what’s responsible for its efficacy.”

“We want to create more awareness that this AAA assay is the first step toward confirming efficacy,” adds Lukawski. “It’s a unique assay understood within the cranberry industry to relate structure to function. This line of research is so important that we’re also inviting manufacturers to participate in the next step, which is a human preclinical study. Participating companies will then be able to use study results to promote their own products and separate themselves from the competition.”