Juice with extras

People who have high levels of cholesterol may be able to drink their way to a healthier heart using sterol-fortified orange juice.

Plant sterols are thought to limit cholesterol absorption in the intestines, thereby reducing the amount that could clog arteries. They were put in fatty foods such as margarine and salad dressings because scientists thought the fats would help the sterols be better absorbed.

Now researchers have found that they also work in fat-free foods, in this case orange juice. “It’s an attractive strategy to lower cholesterol because it can be taken by everybody from teenage to old-age,” said lead researcher Sridevi Devaraj, an assistant pathology professor at UC Davis.

In a 10-week study, 72 healthy volunteers with mildly elevated cholesterol drank a cup of orange juice with breakfast and another with dinner while following a normal diet. Half received unfortified orange juice; the other half got sterol-fortified juice.

At the start of the study, participants’ average total cholesterol was 207 and low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or bad cholesterol, was 137. By the end, those given sterol-fortified juice had a decline in total cholesterol of 7 to 10 points and a decline in LDL of 10 to 15 points, said Devaraj, a researcher at the university’s Laboratory for Atherosclerosis and Metabolic Research. Those who drank unfortified orange juice had no change.

The research, released Feb. 5 in the online edition of the American Heart Assn.’s journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, was funded by the National Institutes of Health and Coca-Cola Co., which also supplied the juice.