Yoghurt enriched with Lactobacillus acidophilus does not lower blood lipids in healthy men and women with normal to borderline high serum cholesterol levels

Abstract

Objective: To investigate whether intake of Lactobacillus acidophilus strain L-1 lowers serum cholesterol in healthy men and women. Design: Randomised, placebo-controlled parallel trial. Setting: Subjects were free-living. Blood sampling and distribution of yoghurts were administered at a local hospital. Subjects: Seventy-eight adult men and women with cholesterol levels of 3.9 ± 7.8 mmolaL (mean AE s.d., 5.4 AE 0.7). Interventions: Subjects consumed 500 mL of control yoghurt daily for two weeks. They were then randomly allocated to receive 500 mL per day of control yoghurt or of yoghurt enriched with Lactobacillus acidophilus L-1 for another six weeks. The yoghurts were spiked with a trace of lithium; compliance as assessed by plasma lithium was excellent. Results: Energy and nutrient intake was constant, and identical for the two groups. Mean body weight was stable. Baseline blood lipid concentrations in the control and treatment groups were highly similar. The effect of consumption of Lactobacillus acidophilus L-1 vs control on total cholesterol was 70.02 mmolaL (95% CI, 70.18 ± 0.15) after three weeks and 0.04 mmolaL (95% CI, 70.12 ± 0.20) after six weeks. Serum LDL and HDLcholesterol and triacylglycerol levels were also unaffected. Conclusions: Yoghurt enriched with Lactobacillus acidophilus L-1 does not lower serum cholesterol in men and women with normal to borderline high cholesterol levels.

Probiotic capsules do not lower plasma lipids in young women and men

“…Investigations demonstrating a hypocholesterolemic effect have generally been conducted in subjects with moderately elevated (46.0 mmol/l) baseline TC (Agerback et al, 1995;Bertolami et al, 1999;Xiao et al, 2003;Hlivak et al, 2005) with the exception of one study with a mean TC of 5.2 mmol/l that included 9 g of fructo-oligosaccharide (a potentially hypocholesterolemic ingredient) in the fermented milk. In contrast, baseline TC in studies that did not show a hypocholesterolemic effect tended to be lower (o5.4 mmol/l) (de Roos et al, 1999;Greany et al, 2004) although a recent investigation in subjects with a mean TC of 6.6 mmol/l (Lewis and Burmeister, 2005) also failed to document a lipid-lowering effect.…”

“…Although most studies have reported a hypocholesterolemic effect (Agerback et al, 1995;Schaafsma et al, 1998;Bertolami et al, 1999;Xiao et al, 2003), not all investigations support this result (Richelsen et al, 1996;de Roos et al, 1999). The logistics of procuring and storing a fermented milk product for daily consumption and the dietary modification required to accommodate the additional calories contained in fermented milk products have prompted an exploration of alternative methods for ingesting probiotic bacteria.…”

Lactobacillus acidophilus 74-2 and Bifidobacterium animalis subsp lactis DGCC 420 modulate unspecific cellular immune response in healthy adults

“…Most studies investigated the cholesterol-lowering effect in hypercholesterolaemic patients or after a high-fat diet (Bertolami et al, 1999;Kawase et al, 2001;Doncheva et al, 2002;Abd El-Gawad et al, 2005). There are few reports documenting the influence on normocholesterolaemic subjects (De Roos et al, 1999;Jahreis et al, 2002).…”

Cholesterol lowering and inhibition of sterol absorption by Lactobacillus reuteri NCIMB 30242: a randomized controlled trial

“…[15][16][17][18][19] The majority of randomized controlled trials, however, have reported no significant effect, [20][21][22][23][24][25] and no clinical trial has reported significant LDL-C reductions of a probiotic supplement formulation unless delivered as a synbiotic. 26 Previously, we have reported on the cholesterollowering efficacy of a microencapsulated BSH-active Lactobacillus reuteri NCIMB 30242 yogurt formulation.…”