TY - JOUR
T1 - A dietary cholesterol challenge study to assess Chlorella supplementation in maintaining healthy lipid levels in adults
T2 - A double-blinded, randomized, placebo-controlled study
AU - Kim, Sangmi
AU - Kim, Joohee
AU - Lim, Yeni
AU - Kim, You Jin
AU - Kim, Ji Yeon
AU - Kwon, Oran
N1 - Funding Information:
We wish to thank the study participants. This study was supported by an unrestricted grant from Daesang Corp. (Seoul, Korea) and the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning (NRF 2012M3A9C4048761). The funding sources had no involvement in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data, the writing of this report, or the decision to submit this manuscript for publication.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Kim et al.
PY - 2016/5/13
Y1 - 2016/5/13
N2 - Background: Previous animal studies suggested that Chlorella, a unicellular green alga, has a preventive role in maintaining serum cholesterol levels against excess dietary cholesterol intake. This study aimed to conduct a pioneering investigation to clarify this issue in healthy subjects by adopting a dietary cholesterol challenge, which has not been used previously in similar studies of Chlorella in hypercholesterolemia. Methods: In this double blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study, 34 participants ingested 510 mg of dietary cholesterol from three eggs concomitantly with a usual dose of Chlorella (5 g/d) or a matched placebo for 4 weeks. Results: The dietary cholesterol challenge induced consistently higher concentrations of serum total cholesterol (TC, P < 0.001), LDL-C (P = 0.004), and HDL-C (P = 0.010) compared with baseline values, suggesting that the challenge was reliable. Thus, we observed a preventive action of Chlorella in maintaining serum TC versus placebo levels (3.5 % versus 9.8 %, respectively; P = 0.037) and LDL-C versus placebo levels (1.7 % versus 14.3 %, respectively; P = 0.012) against excessive dietary cholesterol intake and in augmenting HDL-C versus placebo levels (8.3 % versus 3.8 %, respectively). Furthermore, serum α-carotene showed the best separation between the placebo and Chlorella groups (R2X and R2Y > 0.5; Q2 > 0.4). Conclusion: The results suggest that a fully replicated dietary cholesterol challenge may be useful in assessing the effectiveness of dietary supplements in maintaining the serum lipid profiles of adults whose habitual diets are high in cholesterol.
AB - Background: Previous animal studies suggested that Chlorella, a unicellular green alga, has a preventive role in maintaining serum cholesterol levels against excess dietary cholesterol intake. This study aimed to conduct a pioneering investigation to clarify this issue in healthy subjects by adopting a dietary cholesterol challenge, which has not been used previously in similar studies of Chlorella in hypercholesterolemia. Methods: In this double blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study, 34 participants ingested 510 mg of dietary cholesterol from three eggs concomitantly with a usual dose of Chlorella (5 g/d) or a matched placebo for 4 weeks. Results: The dietary cholesterol challenge induced consistently higher concentrations of serum total cholesterol (TC, P < 0.001), LDL-C (P = 0.004), and HDL-C (P = 0.010) compared with baseline values, suggesting that the challenge was reliable. Thus, we observed a preventive action of Chlorella in maintaining serum TC versus placebo levels (3.5 % versus 9.8 %, respectively; P = 0.037) and LDL-C versus placebo levels (1.7 % versus 14.3 %, respectively; P = 0.012) against excessive dietary cholesterol intake and in augmenting HDL-C versus placebo levels (8.3 % versus 3.8 %, respectively). Furthermore, serum α-carotene showed the best separation between the placebo and Chlorella groups (R2X and R2Y > 0.5; Q2 > 0.4). Conclusion: The results suggest that a fully replicated dietary cholesterol challenge may be useful in assessing the effectiveness of dietary supplements in maintaining the serum lipid profiles of adults whose habitual diets are high in cholesterol.
KW - Carotenoids
KW - Chlorella
KW - Dietary cholesterol challenge
KW - Healthy adult
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84971261025&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1186/s12937-016-0174-9
DO - 10.1186/s12937-016-0174-9
M3 - Article
C2 - 27177615
AN - SCOPUS:84971261025
SN - 1475-2891
VL - 15
JO - Nutrition Journal
JF - Nutrition Journal
IS - 1
M1 - 15
ER -