Theobroma cacao L. is known to have potential cardiovascular and cancer chemopreventive activities because of its high content of phenolic phytochemicals and their antioxidant capacities. In this work, we show for the first time that cocoa inhibits drug-triggered liver cytotoxicity by inducing autophagy. Phenolic-rich extracts of both unroasted and roasted cocoa prevented Celecoxib-induced cell...

Cocoa beans are rich source of polyphenols, contributing about 10% of the dry weight of the whole bean and its derivative chocolate, particularly dark chocolate, is considered one of the major contributors of antioxidants to the American diet after fruits and vegetables. At present the wide variation in cocoa processing and in the content and profile of polyphenols make it difficult to determin...

Cocoa contains numerous polyphenols with laudable antioxidant activity. Glycation has been implicated in the pathogenesis of complications of diabetes mellitus. We investigate the effect of coca on hemoglobin glycation in rats experimentally induced with diabetes. 21 female Sprague-Dawley rats aged 21 weeks were randomly divided into control “C” and diabetic diabetics fed cocoa “DC” and diabeti...

the technical efficiency involved in cocoa production in cross river state was estimated using the stochastic frontier production function analysis. the effects of some selected socio- economic characteristics of the farmers on the efficiency indices were also estimated. the study relied upon primary data generated from interviewing cocoa farmers using a set of structured questionnaire. a multi...

It has been over 10 years since the first mention in a medical journal about cocoa and chocolate as potential sources of antioxidants for health. During this time, cocoa has been found to improve antioxidant status, reduce inflammation and correlate with reduced heart disease risk; with these results, and its popularity, it has received wide coverage in the press. However, after 10 years of res...

The use of cacao, in its familiar food and beverage form, dates back about 3,800 years. By the time of the discovery of America by Europeans, the Aztecs and Mayans had developed methods for drying, roasting and grinding cacao beans for use in beverages and foods. Today, the same processes are used, but have been adapted to modern machinery. The current study was conducted to compare the traditi...

Introduction A data COnvolution and Combination OperAtion (COCOA) [1], has been recently proposed to deal with random and non-rigid motion, which is common in clinical imaging. It has been demonstrated that the ghosts due to swallowing and breathing can be significantly suppressed by COCOA with a minimum impact on the reconstruction time and the image signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In this work, ...

BACKGROUND High blood pressure is an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease, contributing to about 50% of cardiovascular events worldwide and 37% of cardiovascular-related deaths in Western populations. Epidemiological studies suggest that cocoa-rich products reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. Flavanols found in cocoa have been shown to increase the formation of endothelial ni...

The quantitative parameters and method performance for a normal-phase HPLC separation of flavanols and procyanidins in chocolate and cocoa-containing food products were optimized and assessed. Single laboratory method performance was examined over three months using three separate secondary standards. RSD(r) ranged from 1.9%, 4.5% to 9.0% for cocoa powder, liquor and chocolate samples containin...

Recent studies show that ingestion of flavanol-rich cocoa powder provokes increased endothelial production of nitric oxide - an effect likely mediated by epicatchin - and thus may have considerable potential for promoting vascular health. The Kuna Indians of Panama, who regularly consume large amounts of flavanol-rich cocoa, are virtually free of hypertension and stroke, even though they salt t...