Catuaba

What is Catuaba?

Of 168 supplement records in the NIH Dietary Supplement Label Database whose ingredient list names catuaba, 145 declare no botanical genus at all. That figure comes from a query run against the DSLD v9 label API on September 19, 2026, which returns 376 records matching the term. Of the 23 products that do name a genus and species, 20 print “Erythroxylum catuaba,” one of them only in free text rather than in a genus field, and 3 print “Trichilia catigua.” Not one names Erythroxylum vacciniifolium Mart., and not one names Anemopaegma arvense (Vell.) Stellfeld ex De Souza, the two species that carry most of the published chemistry and the old pharmacopeial standing respectively.

Catuaba is a Brazilian vernacular name applied to the bark or root of a long list of unrelated trees and shrubs. The 2017 review by Longhini and colleagues in Revista Brasileira de Farmacognosia puts the count at more than 20 species. Three matter commercially. Trichilia catigua A.Juss. sits in the mahogany family, Meliaceae, and is the material most laboratory work has actually used. Erythroxylum vacciniifolium Mart. sits in Erythroxylaceae, the same family and the same genus as coca, and supplies the tropane alkaloids that gave catuaba its pharmacological reputation. Anemopaegma arvense (Vell.) Stellfeld ex De Souza sits in Bignoniaceae and was the species written into the first edition of the Farmacopeia Brasileira in 1926. Three families, three plant parts, three chemistries, one name.

Common Names

• Catuaba, the trade name used in every market
• Catuaba verdadeira and catuaba falsa, the Brazilian “true” and “false” distinction, applied to different species by different regional sources
• Catigua, catigua amarelo, catigua branco, catigua vermelho, angelim-rosa, pombeiro and veludo, all local names for Trichilia catigua
• Tatuaba and verga-tesa, local names for Anemopaegma arvense
• Chuchuhuasi and marapuama are sold nearby and are sometimes confused with catuaba but are different plants entirely

Primary Active Compounds

• Cinchonain Ia, Ib, IIa and IIb, phenylpropanoid-substituted flavan-3-ols found in Trichilia catigua bark and used as its marker compounds
• Catiguanin A and B, epicatechin derivatives named for the species
• Procyanidin B2, epicatechin, catechin and chlorogenic acid, with chlorogenic acid reaching 2,046 micrograms per gram of bark under turbo extraction with 50 percent ethanol
• Beta-sitosterol at 396 micrograms per gram of bark by Soxhlet extraction with 50 percent ethanol
• Catuabines A, B and C, tropane alkaloids isolated from Erythroxylum vacciniifolium by Graf and Lude in 1977
• Catuabines D, E, F and G plus hydroxy and acetyl derivatives, eight new tropane alkaloid aromatic esters reported by Zanolari and colleagues in 2003
• Triterpenes, flavonoids and proanthocyanidins in Anemopaegma arvense root

Key Note

The compound lists above do not overlap. A flavalignan like cinchonain Ib and a tropane ester like catuabine D are not variants of one another, they are different classes of molecule made by plants in different families. If a bottle says only “catuaba bark,” there is no way from the label to know which of those lists, if either, applies to what is inside.

That single ambiguity shapes everything downstream, from dosing to testing to whether any study you read has anything to do with the powder in your hand.

Primary Functions & Benefits

Every function attributed to catuaba in commerce traces to a small body of preclinical work, nearly all of it on Trichilia catigua, and almost none of it replicated in humans.

Mood and dopaminergic signaling

Campos and colleagues reported in Psychopharmacology in 2005, volume 182, pages 45 to 53, that a hydroalcoholic T. catigua extract produced antidepressant-like effects in the forced swim test in both mice and rats. The extract inhibited uptake and increased release of dopamine and, to a lesser degree, serotonin. Haloperidol and chlorpromazine reversed the effect while serotonergic blockers did not, which points at dopamine rather than serotonin as the driver.

Memory and cholinergic enzymes

Chassot and colleagues, Journal of Ethnopharmacology 2011, volume 137, pages 1143 to 1148, gave crude extract at 200 to 800 milligrams per kilogram and ethyl acetate fraction at 100 to 400 milligrams per kilogram to mice. Crude extract at 800 and fraction at 200 and 400 improved step-down inhibitory avoidance. Neither dose range changed elevated plus maze behavior or open field locomotion, so the anxiolytic claim is not supported by that paper.

Antioxidant capacity

Martins and colleagues, BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2018, measured a DPPH EC50 of 43 micrograms per milliliter for the hydroalcoholic extract against 44 for rutin. Kamdem and colleagues in Acta Pharmaceutica 2012 measured total phenolics from 345.63 plus or minus 41.08 to 601.27 plus or minus 42.59 milligrams gallic acid equivalent per gram of dry extract across four fractions.

Sexual function

This is the selling claim and the weakest one. It rests on Antunes and colleagues, Phytotherapy Research 2001, volume 15, pages 416 to 421, testing the four-herb product Catuama on isolated rabbit corpus cavernosum. Guarana, not catuaba, was the most effective constituent. The whole four-herb product produced 11 to 82 percent relaxation across 1 to 10 milligrams.

Forms & Standardization

This is where the category falls apart in practice, so it deserves the most space.

What is actually sold

• Cut and sifted bark for decoction, usually 50 to 500 gram bags
• Bulk powder, sometimes with no extraction step at all
• Hydroalcoholic tinctures, commonly labeled at roughly 330 milligrams of dried bark per 1 milliliter, in 30 and 120 milliliter bottles
• Dry extracts at stated ratios of 4:1 and 20:1
• Capsules at 375 milligrams and 1,500 milligrams of a 4:1 extract
• Multi-herb “male performance” blends where catuaba sits inside a proprietary blend and carries no individual weight

What an extract ratio does and does not mean

A 4:1 or 20:1 ratio states how much raw bark went in per unit of finished powder. It says nothing about which species the bark came from, which solvent was used, or what came out. Two 20:1 catuaba extracts made from different species are not two strengths of one thing, they are two different products with the same number printed on them.

Solvent choice changes the product materially

Lonni and colleagues, Analytica Chimica Acta 2012, volume 719, pages 57 to 60, ran a statistical mixture design across water, methanol, acetone and ethanol on T. catigua bark. A quaternary 1:1:1:1 mixture of all four gave the highest yield, the highest total polyphenol content and the highest antioxidant activity, with ternary mixtures next. Kamdem’s 70 percent ethanol maceration of 100 grams of stem bark returned 11.61 grams of crude extract, a yield of 11.6 percent. A buyer comparing a water extract to a hydroethanolic extract is comparing two different chemical profiles from the same tree.

The marker compound that exists but is rarely used

Beltrame and colleagues published a validated HPLC method for cinchonain Ib in T. catigua bark and in Brazilian herbal medicines sold as catuaba in Journal of Chromatography A in 2006, volume 1119, pages 257 to 263. Longhini and colleagues extended this in Journal of Separation Science 2013, volume 36, pages 1247 to 1254, with a validated HPLC-PDA method quantifying procyanidin B2, epicatechin, cinchonains Ia, Ib, IIa and IIb, catechin and chlorogenic acid at 280 nanometers. Linearity ran 10 to 120 micrograms per milliliter with correlation coefficients above 0.996, repeatability from 1.89 to 3.23 percent, accuracy 95 percent for procyanidin B2 and 89 percent for epicatechin, limit of detection 1.36 and limit of quantification 4.12 micrograms per milliliter for procyanidin B2.

So the tools exist

Twenty years of validated analytical chemistry is available for anyone who wants to standardize catuaba to cinchonain Ib. Almost no US label mentions it. A search of the DSLD returns 3 records containing the string “catigua” out of 376 catuaba matches.

What a meaningful catuaba label would carry

• Genus, species and botanical authority, printed in full
• Plant part, since T. catigua is used as bark and A. arvense is used as root
• Extraction solvent and its concentration, not only the ratio
• A named marker compound with a percentage, cinchonain Ib being the only one with a validated public method
• An identity method, HPLC fingerprint or DNA-based, rather than only a heavy metals panel

Nothing on the US market that we could locate carries all five.

Food Sources

Catuaba is not a food and has no established dietary intake. The bark is a decoction ingredient and an extract raw material. The name also appears on Brazilian fortified-wine style beverages that are flavored with bark macerations, but those are alcoholic drinks with unquantified and unstandardized botanical content, not a supply route for any measured constituent.

Who Should Take Catuaba

Very few people have a clear reason to, and the ones who do should be clear-eyed about what they are buying.

People with a reason worth considering

• Adults interested in traditional Brazilian tonic herbs who understand they are buying an ethnobotanical, not a validated intervention
• People who specifically want Trichilia catigua for its polyphenol content, and who can find a product that names the species and shows a cinchonain Ib assay
• People already taking a Catuama-style four-herb Brazilian formulation under a clinician’s supervision, where the composition is at least fixed and disclosed

People often marketed to without support

• Men seeking erectile function support. The only in vitro corpus cavernosum work attributes most of the relaxation to guarana, and Kletter’s 2004 team found that neither T. catigua reference extracts nor alkaloid-enriched fractions from commercial samples produced any effect on rabbit corpus cavernosum at all.
• People seeking a libido effect. There is no controlled human trial of any single catuaba species for sexual function.
• People seeking an energy stimulant. In the Catuama formulation the stimulant load comes overwhelmingly from guarana at 40.31 percent, which carries caffeine.

Better matched alternatives

If the goal is erectile function, the evidence base for standardized Panax ginseng or for addressing vascular risk factors is far stronger. If the goal is polyphenol intake, cocoa flavanols and grape seed extract carry quantified dosing. If the goal is fatigue, the first step is iron, ferritin, thyroid panel and sleep, not a bark of uncertain species.

Who Should AVOID or Use Caution

Contraindications

• Pregnancy. Dos Santos and colleagues, Journal of Ethnopharmacology 2015, volume 166, pages 86 to 91, dosed rat dams at 400 milligrams per kilogram by gavage through pregnancy and lactation and found increased pre-implantation and post-implantation loss rates versus control. That is a direct implantation signal, not a theoretical one.
• Lactation. No human data, and the same study dosed through lactation.
• Anyone taking a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. Bernardo and colleagues, Journal of Ethnopharmacology 2018, volume 211, pages 247 to 255, measured MAO-A inhibition by T. catigua bark aqueous extract with an IC50 of 121.06 plus or minus 2.13 micrograms per milliliter.
• Children and adolescents. No pediatric data exist for any catuaba species.

Use Caution

• People on antidepressants, particularly SSRIs, SNRIs and anything serotonergic, given the MAO-A finding and the documented dopamine release.
• People on cholinesterase inhibitors such as donepezil or rivastigmine, given a measured AChE IC50 of 142 micrograms per milliliter for the hydroalcoholic extract.
• People with cardiac arrhythmia or on antiarrhythmics, since the T. catigua literature includes antiarrhythmic activity claims that have never been characterized for interaction risk.
• Anyone with a history of reaction to tannin-rich barks.
• People taking anticholinergic medication who buy a product that turns out to contain Erythroxylum material, since tropane esters are the alkaloid class that anticholinergic drugs belong to.

Critical Safety Point

Kletter and colleagues detected tropane alkaloids in 50 percent of 14 commercial catuaba samples, at varying concentrations, in products that mostly contained Trichilia catigua bark. You cannot predict from the label whether a given bottle delivers a polyphenol extract with no alkaloids or a product carrying an uncharacterized tropane ester load. That unpredictability, not any single compound, is the safety problem.

Recommended Dosages

There is no validated dose for catuaba, because dose presumes a known substance and catuaba does not identify one. What follows is what is used, with the caveat attached.

Dried bark decoction

Traditional Brazilian use runs 1 to 3 cups daily, typically prepared from 2 to 6 grams of cut bark simmered in 250 milliliters of water. No pharmacokinetic work supports this figure.

Tincture

Commonly 2 to 3 milliliters twice daily of a preparation stated at roughly 330 milligrams dried bark per milliliter, which works out to about 1.3 to 2.0 grams of bark equivalent daily.

4:1 dry extract capsules

Marketed serving sizes cluster at 375 milligrams and 1,500 milligrams, the latter nominally equivalent to 6 grams of bark.

20:1 dry extract powder

Sold at 500 milligrams to 1 gram per serving, nominally 10 to 20 grams of bark equivalent. The ratio is unverifiable without a marker assay.

The one fixed human dose on record

Spanemberg and colleagues used capsules containing 310 milligrams total, of which Trichilia catigua was 87.5 milligrams, at 2 capsules daily for 8 weeks. That is 175 milligrams of T. catigua per day inside a four-herb product. It is the only catuaba dose ever tested in a randomized controlled human trial, and it was never tested alone.

Duration

The longest documented human exposure is 28 days in the Oliveira 2005 Catuama tolerability study and 8 weeks in the Spanemberg trial. Nothing supports continuous use beyond 8 weeks. A reasonable ceiling is 6 to 8 weeks with a break, on the grounds that there is no data past that point rather than any evidence of harm at it.

Timing & Administration

With or without food

No human absorption study exists for any catuaba species. Chavari and colleagues quantified procyanidin B2 and epicatechin in rat plasma after a single 400 milligram per kilogram oral dose of standardized T. catigua extract, detecting both up to 300 minutes post-dose with quantification limits of 5 and 12.5 nanograms per milliliter respectively. That confirms two marker polyphenols are absorbed in rats. No human pharmacokinetics have been published. Tannin-rich barks commonly cause gastric discomfort on an empty stomach, so taking it with food is the sensible default.

Time of day

Marketed as a stimulant, catuaba is usually taken in the morning or early afternoon. The Martins 2018 mouse data showed increased spontaneous locomotor activity after exercise at 250 milligrams per kilogram, which is the closest thing to a stimulant signal in the literature. Anyone sensitive to sleep disruption should keep dosing before 2 pm.

Separation from other supplements

Polyphenol-rich barks bind non-heme iron. Separate catuaba from iron supplements by at least 2 hours. The same applies to zinc and, as a general precaution, to thyroid hormone, which already carries a 4-hour separation rule from most supplements.

Preparation

If using cut bark, simmer rather than steep. Flavalignans and procyanidins extract poorly into a brief hot water infusion, and the extraction chemistry above shows that hydroalcoholic and mixed-solvent systems pull substantially more.

Timeline of Effects

Days 1 to 3

Nothing reliable. Any immediate lift is more likely from caffeine in a blend than from catuaba itself. Check the label for guarana before attributing an effect.

Week 1 to week 2

In the Spanemberg burning mouth syndrome trial, the treatment arm separated from placebo at the 4-week assessment, not earlier. No human data document anything in the first 2 weeks.

Week 4

The first documented human timepoint at which a catuaba-containing product beat placebo on a symptom score.

Week 8

The Spanemberg endpoint. Symptom reduction was 52.4 percent in the treatment group against 24.2 percent in controls. The between-group difference remained significant at the 12-week follow-up, 4 weeks after treatment stopped.

Beyond week 12

No data of any kind, in any species, for any catuaba product.

Honest framing

Because 145 of 168 labeled products do not name a species, a personal trial of catuaba is not a trial of catuaba. It is a trial of one specific lot of one specific unnamed bark. Rebuying the same brand is the only way to approximate consistency, and even that is not guaranteed across lots.

Benefits of Taking Catuaba

Documented in animals or in vitro, at named doses

• Antidepressant-like activity in forced swim testing in mice and rats, mediated by dopamine release and uptake inhibition, reversed by haloperidol and chlorpromazine
• Memory improvement in step-down inhibitory avoidance in mice at crude extract 800 milligrams per kilogram and ethyl acetate fraction 200 and 400 milligrams per kilogram
• Antioxidant activity with a DPPH EC50 of 43 micrograms per milliliter, essentially matching rutin at 44
• Superoxide radical scavenging with an EC50 of 104.42 plus or minus 10.67 micrograms per milliliter
• Acetylcholinesterase inhibition with an IC50 of 142 micrograms per milliliter, roughly 8 times weaker than rivastigmine at 18
• Antibacterial activity for a mixture of cinchonains Ia and Ib against Bacillus cereus, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus
• Protection against DEHP-induced testicular damage in male mice over 28 days of oral dosing

Documented in humans

• One randomized, controlled, double-blind trial of a four-herb product containing 87.5 milligrams of Trichilia catigua per capsule, in 72 patients with burning mouth syndrome, showing 52.4 percent versus 24.2 percent symptom reduction at 8 weeks

That is the complete human efficacy list. One trial, one indication, one combination product, one species contributing 28.23 percent of the formula.

Potential Negatives & Side Effects

Commonly reported by users, not systematically studied

• Insomnia and restlessness, most plausible when the product contains guarana
• Gastrointestinal upset, nausea and loose stools, consistent with high tannin content
• Headache
• Dry mouth, which is the classic anticholinergic sign and would be the expected direction if a tropane-containing lot is involved

Reproductive signal

The rat implantation finding at 400 milligrams per kilogram is the single most concrete adverse finding in the literature and it has not been followed up in any species, including humans.

Interaction-driven effects

MAO-A inhibition at 121 micrograms per milliliter is not strong, but it is measurable and it sits on top of documented dopamine release. In someone already on a serotonergic or dopaminergic drug, that combination is the realistic risk channel.

The unquantifiable one

More than half of the 14 samples Kletter’s group examined were adulterated with crude drugs other than what the label claimed. The side effect profile of an adulterant cannot be listed because the adulterant is not known. This is why product selection matters more here than dose selection.

No published serious harm

We found no published case report of hepatotoxicity, cardiotoxicity or death attributed to catuaba. That absence reflects weak surveillance of an ingredient nobody tracks as much as it reflects any safety margin.

Deficiency Symptoms

Catuaba is not an essential nutrient, so no deficiency state exists. There is no recommended intake, no adequate intake, no reference range, and no clinical sign of not consuming it.

What catuaba addresses

The traditional indications are fatigue, low mood, poor memory and sexual dysfunction. Each of those has real and testable causes: iron deficiency, thyroid dysfunction, sleep debt, depression, vascular disease, testosterone deficiency, medication side effects. None of them is a catuaba shortfall. Catuaba enters, at best, as an adjunct after those are ruled out, and even then the supporting evidence is preclinical.

Bottom line

If you are fatigued, get ferritin, a complete blood count, TSH and a sleep assessment before you get a bark of uncertain species. A supplement that cannot tell you which plant it is cannot correct anything specific.

Toxicity Symptoms

At high intake

Acute rodent toxicology is reassuring for Trichilia catigua specifically. Chang and colleagues, Frontiers in Pharmacology 2022, volume 13, article 832789, reported a maximum tolerated dose in mice of up to 2.7 grams per kilogram. Scaled naively, 2.7 grams per kilogram in a mouse is far above any human serving on the market.

Signs to reduce or stop

• Dry mouth, blurred vision, urinary hesitancy, flushing or confusion, the anticholinergic cluster, which would be the expected presentation if a product contains meaningful tropane alkaloid
• Palpitations or a resting heart rate rise, particularly with guarana-containing blends
• Persistent insomnia beyond the first week
• Nausea, epigastric pain or dark stools, which in a tannin-heavy preparation warrant stopping and a clinical check
• Any rash, itching or facial swelling, which calls for immediate discontinuation

General note

The rodent numbers above apply to authenticated T. catigua material extracted under controlled conditions. They do not transfer to a bottle of unidentified bark. The relevant toxicological unknown for a consumer is not the dose, it is the identity, and no safety margin measured on one species protects against a different species in the capsule.

How Catuaba Works

The mechanism depends entirely on which plant you actually have, which is the whole problem stated in pharmacological terms.

If the material is Trichilia catigua

The active fraction is polyphenolic. Bernardo’s group identified 26 phenolic compounds in a bark aqueous extract, with phenylpropanoid-substituted flavan-3-ols making up roughly 81 percent of the quantified mass. Three mechanisms have measured values behind them. First, monoamine handling: increased release and reduced reuptake of dopamine and serotonin from synaptosomes, with MAO-A inhibition at an IC50 of 121.06 micrograms per milliliter adding a second route to the same effect. Second, cholinergic: mixed-type acetylcholinesterase inhibition by the aqueous extract, with the Martins 2018 hydroalcoholic extract giving an IC50 of 142 micrograms per milliliter. Third, redox: direct suppression of the xanthine oxidase pathway plus superoxide scavenging at an EC50 of 104.42 micrograms per milliliter.

If the material is Erythroxylum vacciniifolium

The characteristic constituents are tropane alkaloid aromatic esters. Zanolari’s team extracted 840 grams of bark to obtain 15.7 grams of crude alkaloid extract and isolated 8 new compounds, catuabines D through G plus hydroxylated and acetylated derivatives, building on the catuabines A, B and C reported by Graf and Lude in 1977. Queiroz and colleagues added 2 more in 2009. No receptor pharmacology has been published for any of them, so the mechanism here is a structural class rather than a demonstrated action.

If the material is Anemopaegma arvense

Triterpenes, flavonoids, proanthocyanidins and phenylpropanoid-substituted epicatechins have been reported from the root, with antioxidant and cytoprotective activity in vitro. No neurochemical mechanism has been worked out.

The corpus cavernosum question

Antunes showed relaxation of rabbit corpus cavernosum by Catuama that was not blocked by L-NAME, glibenclamide or atropine, ruling out nitric oxide, ATP-sensitive potassium channels and muscarinic receptors, and pointing instead at cyclic AMP. Guarana raised cAMP by 200 percent at its optimal concentration. Trichilia catigua did not raise cAMP. Three years later Kletter’s group found no corpus cavernosum effect from T. catigua reference extracts at all.

Synergistic Supplements

Inside the only formulation with human data

Catuama pairs Trichilia catigua at 28.23 percent with Paullinia cupana at 40.31 percent, Ptychopetalum olacoides at 28.23 percent and Zingiber officinale at 3.26 percent. That combination, not catuaba alone, is what the 72-patient burning mouth trial and the 28-day tolerability study actually tested. If you want the evidence to apply to what you take, this is the composition to match.

Plausible but untested pairings

• Guarana, which contributes caffeine and was the dominant active in the corpus cavernosum work
• Muira puama, Ptychopetalum olacoides, the traditional Brazilian partner herb
• Ginger, present at a low 3.26 percent in the reference formula and most likely there for gastric tolerance

Pairings that make sense on paper only

• Vitamin C with the polyphenol fraction, on general antioxidant grounds with no catuaba-specific data
• Zinc for men targeting sexual function, which addresses a different pathway entirely and should be assessed on its own merits

A caution on stacking

Combining catuaba with other MAO-active or dopaminergic botanicals, including Rhodiola rosea, Mucuna pruriens and yohimbine-containing products, has never been studied and puts two poorly characterized monoamine effects on the same receptor systems at once.

Interactions & What NOT to Take

Avoid combining

• MAO inhibitors, including phenelzine, tranylcypromine, isocarboxazid and selegiline, given measured MAO-A inhibition
• SSRIs and SNRIs, on the same grounds plus documented serotonin release
• Levodopa and dopamine agonists, given documented dopamine release and reuptake inhibition
• Cholinesterase inhibitors, donepezil, rivastigmine and galantamine, given AChE inhibition at 142 micrograms per milliliter
• Anticholinergic drugs, including oxybutynin, scopolamine and first-generation antihistamines, if there is any chance the product contains Erythroxylum material
• Antiarrhythmic drugs, on the basis of unquantified antiarrhythmic activity attributed to T. catigua

Separate in time

• Iron and zinc supplements, by at least 2 hours, because of tannin binding
• Levothyroxine, by 4 hours, on standard supplement-separation grounds

Testing interference

Tropane alkaloids in Erythroxylum species are structurally related to the alkaloids in coca, and although catuaba species do not produce cocaine, anyone subject to workplace drug testing should know that the genus Erythroxylum contains 270 accepted species and that only E. coca and E. novogranatense are the commercial cocaine sources. No published report documents a false positive from catuaba, but no one has looked either.

Surgery

Stop at least 2 weeks before any scheduled procedure, given monoamine and cholinergic activity plus unknown anesthetic interactions.

Quality, Testing & Adulteration

This section carries the most weight in this issue, because for catuaba, identity testing is the entire question.

What the authentication studies found

Kletter and colleagues, Planta Medica 2004, volume 70, issue 10, pages 993 to 1000, examined 14 commercial catuaba samples sold as bark of Anemopaegma, Erythroxylum and Trichilia species. Only a minority contained the crude drug the label claimed. More than half were adulterated with different crude drugs. The majority contained bark from Trichilia catigua regardless of what the label said. Thin layer chromatography fingerprints confirmed the heterogeneity, and tropane alkaloids were found in 50 percent of samples at varying concentrations. The team elucidated the structures of the 2 main alkaloids, catuabine D and its hydroxymethyl derivative.

Daolio and colleagues, Phytochemical Analysis 2008, volume 19, pages 218 to 228, took 11 commercial samples plus 3 reference standards from pharmacies, markets and companies in São Paulo, Paraná and Mato Grosso do Sul. Using proton high-resolution magic angle spinning NMR, liquid NMR and HPLC with principal component analysis, they found most commercial samples matched the Trichilia catigua standard, not the Anemopaegma arvense roots the Brazilian Pharmacopeia specified. Two samples, S2 and S5, matched neither standard. Samples also clustered by state of origin, meaning the species sold under the name varies geographically inside Brazil.

A morpho-anatomic study out of Universidade Estadual de Ponta Grossa examined 13 samples, 6 powdered capsule products from pharmacies and 7 bark samples from street markets, and found the capsule and dried plant material matched the T. catigua anatomical pattern, with 1 sample distinct from all others.

The naming problem, exactly

Erythroxylum catuaba A.J.Silva was published in 1904 in Estudo Botanico e Chimico da Catuaba as a nomen nudum, a name with no accompanying description, which makes it invalid under the nomenclatural code. Kew’s Plants of the World Online lists it as a synonym of Protium catuaba (Soares da Cunha) Daly and P.Fine, family Burseraceae, previously placed as Tetragastris catuaba. The FDA’s Global Substance Registration System assigns UNII 3W8LSF0XRN to this material under the preferred name PROTIUM CATUABA BARK, with “Erythroxylum catuaba bark extract” listed as a synonym. So the species name printed on 20 of the 23 US catuaba labels that name anything resolves, in the two reference systems that matter, to a tree in a fourth family that essentially no phytochemical work has been done on.

The regulatory history

The first edition of the Farmacopeia Brasileira, adopted by decree in 1926, made Anemopaegma arvense root, listed under the name Anemopaegma mirandum, the official catuaba drug. The fifth edition, 2010, contains no catuaba monograph. There is currently no US Pharmacopeia monograph for catuaba, no AHPA botanical identity standard, and no ABC-AHP-NCNPR Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program bulletin for it.

What testing a responsible buyer should demand

• An HPLC identity fingerprint compared against an authenticated reference of a named species, not a purity panel
• Quantified cinchonain Ib by the Beltrame 2006 method or phenylpropanoid-substituted flavan-3-ols by the Longhini 2013 method, if the claim is Trichilia catigua
• A tropane alkaloid screen, given that half of Kletter’s samples carried them
• DNA-based identification where the material is bark rather than a high-ratio extract, since DNA degrades through solvent extraction
• Standard heavy metals, microbial and pesticide panels, which are necessary but answer none of the above

What you will actually receive

A heavy metals and microbial certificate with the word “Catuaba” in the product field. That document is true and irrelevant. It confirms the powder is clean. It says nothing about what the powder is.

Sustainability, which is also a quality issue

Brazil’s Centro Nacional de Conservação da Flora assessed Anemopaegma arvense as Endangered in 2012, citing roughly 50 percent population decline over 10 years driven by wild harvest for the medicinal plant trade with no domestic cultivation, against a Cerrado biome that had lost about 48 percent of its native vegetation by 2009. Buying an unidentified “catuaba” leaves no way to know whether an endangered wild-harvested root is in the bottle.

Special Considerations

Pregnancy and lactation

Avoid outright. The 400 milligram per kilogram rat study showing increased pre-implantation and post-implantation loss is the governing datapoint, and there is no human safety information at any dose.

Older adults

Two cautions converge. Anticholinergic burden is a documented driver of cognitive decline and falls in older adults, and any lot containing tropane alkaloids adds to that burden invisibly. Separately, cholinesterase inhibition at 142 micrograms per milliliter could theoretically stack with prescribed dementia drugs.

Men using PDE5 inhibitors

There is no interaction study. The mechanism Antunes identified was cyclic AMP rather than the cyclic GMP pathway sildenafil and tadalafil act on, which argues against direct overlap, but that finding was for the four-herb product, not for catuaba alone.

Competitive athletes

Unidentified botanical material of variable species composition is exactly the profile that produces inadvertent doping violations. No catuaba product we located carries NSF Certified for Sport or Informed Sport certification.

Liver or kidney impairment

No pharmacokinetic or clearance data exist in any human population, healthy or impaired.

Allergy

Reaction to tannin-rich barks is the plausible route. Anyone with known sensitivity to Meliaceae, the mahogany family, should treat Trichilia catigua accordingly.

Research Status & Evidence Quality

Strong Evidence For

Nothing. No catuaba species has a replicated randomized controlled human trial for any indication.

Moderate Evidence For

• Antioxidant activity of Trichilia catigua extracts in vitro, measured across multiple independent laboratories with consistent DPPH and phenolic values
• The chemical identity of the T. catigua marker profile, with cinchonains Ia, Ib, IIa and IIb, procyanidin B2, epicatechin, catechin and chlorogenic acid all quantifiable by validated methods
• Widespread species substitution in the commercial supply, supported by 3 independent authentication studies using morphology, NMR, HPLC and chemometrics

Emerging / Preliminary Evidence For

• Antidepressant-like activity via dopaminergic mechanisms, rodent only
• Memory improvement in rodent inhibitory avoidance, at doses of 200 to 800 milligrams per kilogram
• Acetylcholinesterase and MAO-A inhibition, in vitro only, at concentrations well above what oral dosing plausibly achieves in plasma
• Symptom relief in burning mouth syndrome, from 1 trial of 72 patients using a 4-herb product in which catuaba supplied 87.5 milligrams of a 310 milligram capsule

Research Limitations

The central limitation is not sample size or blinding. It is that the exposure variable is undefined. A 2004 study on samples labeled Anemopaegma that turned out to be Trichilia cannot be compared to a 2018 study on authenticated Trichilia, and neither speaks to a 2003 alkaloid paper on Erythroxylum vacciniifolium. Beyond that: nearly all in vivo work is rodent; human data amount to 1 randomized trial and 1 uncontrolled 28-day tolerability study whose published abstract does not state how many volunteers took part; no human pharmacokinetic study exists; the in vitro IC50 and EC50 values sit in the 40 to 145 micrograms per milliliter range, which is orders of magnitude above realistic plasma polyphenol concentrations; and the corpus cavernosum results that launched the aphrodisiac claim were contradicted 3 years later by a group that found no effect from T. catigua at all.

Summary & Key Takeaways

Catuaba fails at the first step, which is saying what it is. Everything after that, the dose, the timing, the stacking, the certificate of analysis, presumes an answer that the category does not have. Three accepted species in three families are traded under the name, a fourth invalid name dominates US labels and resolves to a fifth plant in a fourth family, the current Brazilian pharmacopoeia carries no catuaba monograph, and 145 of 168 US products do not name a genus at all. The chemistry is real, the analytical methods are validated and 20 years old, and almost nobody in the supply chain uses them.

Bottom Line

If you want to try catuaba, buy only a product that prints Trichilia catigua A.Juss., names the plant part as bark, states the extraction solvent, and can supply an HPLC identity fingerprint or a cinchonain Ib assay. That narrows the US market to a handful of products. If a seller cannot answer “which species,” the correct action is to stop there, because no other question about the product can be answered either.

Key Safety Points

• Avoid in pregnancy and lactation, based on increased implantation loss in rats at 400 milligrams per kilogram
• Avoid with MAO inhibitors, SSRIs, SNRIs, levodopa and cholinesterase inhibitors
• Expect no more than 6 to 8 weeks of use, the outer limit of documented human exposure
• Watch for dry mouth, blurred vision and confusion, which would indicate tropane alkaloid content that the label did not disclose
• Separate from iron and zinc by 2 hours and from levothyroxine by 4 hours
• Stop 2 weeks before surgery

Special Note

The 87.5 milligrams of Trichilia catigua inside a 310 milligram four-herb capsule, taken twice daily for 8 weeks by 38 patients with burning mouth syndrome, is the sum total of randomized controlled human evidence for catuaba in any form, for any purpose. Every marketing claim made for the ingredient sits on top of that one number, plus a shelf of rodent studies, plus a 1904 name that was never validly published.