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Red yeast rice has anti-hyperlipidemic properties

12/03/2019 // Evangelyn Rodriguez // Views

Tags: alternative medicine, cholesterol, disease treatments, food cures, food is medicine, functional food, goodfood, goodhealth, goodmedicine, goodscience, hyperlipidemia, natural cures, natural medicine, phytonutrients, red yeast rice, remedies, research, superfoods

Researchers from Taiwan examined the efficacy of monacolin K-rich and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-rich red yeast rice (RYR) in treating hyperlipidemia in a randomized control double-blind clinical trial. Their results were published in The American Journal of Chinese Medicine.

• RYR (Monascus pilosus) is traditionally used as an alternative treatment for hyperlipidemia.
• Previous studies suggest that other compounds in it besides monacolin K can also reduce serum lipid levels.
• To further investigate this, the researchers gave 50 eligible subjects either monacolin K-rich RYR, GABA-rich RYR or a placebo.
• They evaluated these subjects' total cholesterol (TC), LDL-C (low-density lipoprotein cholesterol), HDL (high-density lipoprotein), triglyceride (TC) and blood chemistry data at different phases:

  • Before administration (visit 1)
  • After 1 month (visit 2)
  • After 2 months (visit 3)
  • After 3 months (visit 4)
  • 1 month after the end of test period (visit 5)

• During the three-month intervention, the researchers observed that the serum TC and LDL-C levels of the subjects given monacolin K decreased more than the other groups. Meanwhile, serum TG levels also declined steadily but were not significantly different between the three groups.
• The researchers also found no marked differences in the serum HDL levels of the three groups.
• While monacolin K-rich RYR reduced cholesterol as expected, GABA-rich RYR reduced serum TG, although the reduction was not significant.

Based on these results, the researchers concluded that using different concentrations and ratios of monacolin K and GABA is beneficial for treating hyperlipidemia.

Journal Reference:

Wang TJ, Lien ASY, Chen JL, Lin CH, Yang YS, Yang SH. A RANDOMIZED CLINICAL EFFICACY TRIAL OF RED YEAST RICE (MONASCUS PILOSUS) AGAINST HYPERLIPIDEMIA. The American Journal of Chinese Medicine. 2019;47(02):323–335. DOI: 10.1142/s0192415x19500150

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