The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 271 No 7260 p140
2 August 2003

This article
Reprint
Photocopy

News summary

Related websites
JAMA abstract (more)

Special cholesterol-lowering diet can achieve same effects as statin therapy

A change in diet could allow patients with high cholesterol levels to reduce their lipid levels by the same amount as can be achieved through drug therapy, a new study suggests.

Canadian researchers have shown that a diet supplemented with foods high in viscous fibres and plant sterols reduces blood lipids by an amount similar to that obtained with a 20mg daily dose of lovastatin (a first generation statin, not marketed in the United Kingdom). They assigned 46 adults with raised cholesterol to one of three groups — a vegetarian diet low in saturated fats (the control group), the same diet plus a daily dose of lovastatin, or a diet low in saturated fats and high in four foods known to have cholesterol-lowering properties (plant sterols from enriched margarine, viscous fibres from oats, barley and psyllium, soy protein from soy milk and soy meat substitutes, and almonds).

The researchers found that low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels were reduced by 28.6 per cent in patients who ate the diet rich in foods known to lower cholesterol. This was significantly more than for patients given the control diet (8.0 per cent) and similar to the reduction seen in patients treated with lovastatin (30.9 per cent).

"This study shows that people now have a dietary alternative to drugs to control their cholesterol, at least initially," says lead investigator Dr David Jenkins, of St Michael's Hospital, Toronto, Ontario.

The researchers attribute the enhanced lipid-lowering effect of the supplemented diet to its separate components: "Viscous fibres increase bile acid losses, plant sterols reduce cholesterol absorption, and soy proteins reduce hepatic cholesterol synthesis." They add that almonds contain a monounsaturated fatty acid- and plant sterol-rich oil known to lower LDL-cholesterol.

The study is published in JAMA (2003;290:502).