Over the past few weeks I've been scouring the web in search of research reports where resveratrol was tested to see what affect it had on LDL, HDL, and Triglycerides.
Let me first introduce a new term that I came across in many of the studies I reviewed. "Hypercholesterolemia" is the fancy word being touted which translates to mean, "high blood cholesterol." When reading studies and medical journals you will here this term being used rather freely. For me it's harder to say it then type what it means; high cholesterol seems a bit easier but who am I to say.
A study I found most interesting is one in which both a statin and trans-resveratrol was used in testing. Statins are cholesterol lowering medications of which the most common are Lipitor and Zocor. The study used 5 sets of mice that were treated with either statin, trans-resveratrol, both, or nothing at all.
"Statin and Resveratrol in Combination induces Protection against Myocardial Infarction in Hypercholesterolemic Rat" (references below)
To summarize the results of this study lets first start by showing how the research was setup. Rats were fed a high cholesterol diet for 8 weeks after which for the next 2 weeks they were broken into 5 groups and treated accordingly. Those 5 groups of lab rats were randomly separated into the following categories:
Group #1: (C) Control group without a high cholesterol diet and without treatment from statin or resveratrol.
Group #2: (HC) HC group which stands for "hypercholesterolemia." This group was fed a high cholesterol diet without any treatment.
Group #3: (HCR) HCR group are rats on the HC diet that were also treated with (R) resveratrol.
Group #4: (HCS) HCS group are rats on the HC diet that were also treated with (S) statin.
Group #5: (HCRS) HCRS group are rats on the HC diet that were treated with both statin and resveratrol.
Now that we have the groups established lets look a little further into the results of the study. I've highlighted some of the findings below:
Effect of resveratrol and statin on lipid levels
"The levels of cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL-C were found to be increased and HDL-C level was found to be decreased in HC group when compared to control. Treatment with resveratrol significantly lowered the cholesterol, triglycerides, LDL-C levels when compared to HC group. The lipid lowering ability was more prominent in HCS and HCRS (Table-1) than in HCR group."
Effect of resveratrol and statin on cardiac functions
"Similarly, aortic flow significantly increased HCR, HCS and in HCRS groups when compared to HC group. In spite of significant functional recovery in HCR and HCS groups, the HCRS group was found to demonstrate more functional recovery when compared to individual treatment groups (monotherapy). Therefore as expected resveratrol and statin showed significant recovery of postischemic myocardial function (Figure 1A–1E) as compared to HC."
Effect of resveratrol and statin on infarct size
"The values were significantly reduced in HCRS, HCS and HCR treatment (37±3.6, 43±3.3 and 44±4.2) as compared to the HC group (53.74±4.6) (Figure-2). To be more accurate combination group was found to be more effective (37±3.6) in reducing infarct when compared to statin (43±3.3) and resveratrol (44±4.2) group individually."
There are several other parts of this study that continued to show the added benefits of combining both statin and resveratrol. I found the results to be very promising in that most show resveratrol by itself helped to treat many of the functions tested, including overall cholesterol levels. It leads me to believe we are on the "right track" with regards to finding a non-synthetic form of treating high cholesterol. Further, if you are comfortable taking both resveratrol and a statin the effects may be even that much greater. We might not be rats but these studies show progress. Hopefully there will be human studies completed in the near future.
To read the full study please follow this link:
Published by J Mol Cell Cardiol. 2007 March; 42(3): 508-516
Suresh Varma Penumathsa,1 Mahesh Thirunavukkarasu,1 Srikanth Koneru,1 Bela Juhasz,1 Lijun Zhan,1 Rima Pant,1 Venugopal P Menon,2 Hajime Otani,3 and Nilanjana Maulik1
1 Molecular Cardiology and Angiogenesis Laboratory, Department of Surgery, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, CT, USA
2 Department of Biochemistry, Annamalai University, TN, India
3 Cardiovascular Center, Kansai Medical University, Osaka, Japan
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