Aging is a phenomenon that results in the steady physiological deterioration in nearly all organisms, leading to in creased risk of diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. And oxidative stress, a process in which the free radi cals released by the body cause cellular damage, is found to be a crucial indicator of aging, and age-related diseases. The body naturally produces antioxidants, chemicals that can prevent oxidative damage caused by free radicals, but it is not enough to slow the damage. So external sources of antioxidants have been shown to assist in coping with this damage. Thus, the search for effective, non toxic natural compounds with antioxidative activity has intensified in recent years, and many supplements even advocate for longevity with their use. This leads to the question of the health benefits associated with the consumption of diets rich in antioxidants and their ability to improve health, thus prevent or delay the onset of age-related diseases.

One such natural food containing a high amount of antioxidant is the aronia berry or chokeberry, a native to eastern North America. And while there have been few previous studies done on the protective effects of this fruit, it has been shown to reduce cellular damage in relation to breast cancer, reduce liver damage in rats, and showcase anti-diabetic effects. The chokeberry also has the highest antioxidants levels in comparison to other common sources of antioxidants.

So in this study, the health benefits of Aronia melanocarpa or chokeberry is studied on the model organism Drosophila melanogaster, and its effect of the lifespan and health span of the fruit flies are observed. This is conducted in conjunction with resveratrol and a control. A negative geotaxis test for climbing ability and a hydrogen peroxide test for resistance against oxidative stress were used as measures of the sustained health of Drosophila exposed to 500 UM concentration of aronia berry, a 500 um concentration and control. As part of this study, Drosophila were exposed to a survival study over a 10 day period, and another set of flies were reared in these concentrations for four days, and used to perform the assays on.

Solutions of resveratrol were created by dissolving .228 grams of resveratrol powder in enough ethanol to make a STOCK solution of 0.1 M concentration, which was then diluted with 199ml of water and 1 ml of 0.1M to create a 500uM solution. The same procedure was followed for the aronia berry except using only water. These solutions were incorporated into the dry media in the same volume of 20 ml for 3.704 g of dry media. Age matched flies were collected after eclosion and observed in a survival study. The differences between the different groups in this study were not significant to conclude that aronia berry could extend the lifespan of fruit flies.

In the negative geotaxis assay, a plastic vial was inverted on top of another vial and taped together to create a sealed chamber in which the fruit flies were induced to climb towards the light source from above. Their activity was recorded on a camera, and the number of flies that climbed above the 2 cm mark after 10 seconds was recorded for each group. This study revealed significant differences between the flies exposed to aronia berry and the flies in the control. There were also signifi cant differences between the resveratrol and the aronia, in which the aronia berry reared flies performed better under the assay conditions. This indicates that aronia berry could potentially lead to sustained health in aged flies.

In the hydrogen peroxide stress resistance test, flies reared in each of the three groups aforementioned were placed in vials with filter paper saturated with 100 uL of 5% H2O2 in 5% sucrose. Dead flies counts were recorded every four hours. At the conclusion of this study, flies reared in aronia berry concentrations performed more than 50% better in comparison to the control, while the resveratrol flies performed 18% better than the control. These results suggest that aronia berry could potentially increase resistance to oxidative stress damage in drosophila. This could have applications in finding preventative solu tions to age-related diseases that are induced by oxidative damage. Aronia berry can be further used in studies that implicate immunity as well, as it could prevent cell damage caused by oxidative stress.