Analytical criteria to quantify and compare the antioxidant and pro-oxidant capacity in competition assays: The bell protection function

•Simple non-linear dose-time criteria to test the anti- and pro-oxidant activities•Two robust values that are obtained allows one to perform easily comparisons.•The criteria were validated with data from common anti- and pro-oxidant assays.•Further capabilities of the criteria are illustrated to more complex responses.

The development of a convenient mathematical application for testing the antioxidant and pro-oxidant potential of standard and novel therapeutic agents is essential for the research community and food industry in order to perform more precise evaluations of products and processes. In this work, a simple non-linear dose-time tool to test the effectiveness of compounds for competitive assays is presented. The model helps to describe accurately the antioxidant and pro-oxidant response as a function of time and dose by two criteria values and allows one to perform easily comparisons of both capacities from different compounds. The quantification procedure developed was applied to two well known in vitro competition assays, the β-carotene and crocin bleaching asymptotic reactions. The dose-time dependency of the response of commercial antioxidants and some expected pro-oxidant compounds was evaluated in this study and the results showed low experimental error. In addition, as an illustrative example of the capabilities of the criteria proposed, the quantification of the combined effect of an antioxidant and a pro-oxidant was analyzed. Afterwards, the model was verified for other relevant competitive methods, using available experimental data from the bibliography. Its application is simple, it provides parametric estimates which characterize the response, and it facilitates rigorous comparisons among the effects of different compounds and experimental approaches. In all experimental data tested, the calculated parameters were always statistically significant (Student's t-test, α = 0.05), the equations were consistent (Fisher's F-test) and the goodness of fit coefficient of determination was higher than 0.98.