Yahoo News. Health Headlines. Monday, March 22, 1999

Blue-Green Algae May Lower Cholesterol
   

NEW YORK, March 22 (Reuters Health) - Studies conducted at Harvard Medical School suggest that feeding rats blue-green algae dietary supplements may help reduce levels of circulating cholesterol.
   
"We hypothesize that taking (an algae) supplement may help maintain cholesterol level within a healthy range," report Dr. Rafail Kuschak and colleagues at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, and Christian Drapeau of Cell Tech in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Drapeau presented the findings at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society, held this week in Anaheim, California.
   
Numerous studies have suggested that high dietary intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) may help lower blood cholesterol levels and reduce risks for certain medical conditions including cardiovascular disease, arthritis, and mental illness.
   
The researchers point out that PUFAs comprise nearly 10% of the dry weight of a blue-green algae known as Aphanizomenon flos-aquae, which grows naturally in North American lakes.
   
To help determine the algae's impact on cardiovascular health, the investigators fed laboratory rats either a standard diet supplemented with 5% soybean oil (another source of PUFAs) or a PUFA-deficient diet fortified with increasing amounts of dried blue-green algae (up to 15%).
   
They report that the algae "is a better source of PUFA than soybean oil and has significant hypocholesterolemic (cholesterol-lowering) properties."
   
According to Kuschak and colleagues, rats fed diets supplemented "with 10% and 15% algae decreased their blood cholesterol to 54% and 25%" of those of rats fed the standard diet.
   
The algae may also be a highly efficient source of alpha-linolenic acid (LNA) - a compound that has been linked in earlier research to reduced risks for cancer and cardiovascular disease. While both soybean oil and blue-green algae contain LNA, the authors note that rats required triple the amount of soybean oil in their diets to achieve the same level of circulating LNA of rats fed algae.
   
Overall, the study results suggest that the benefits of algae supplementation exceed those of soybean oil, despite the fact that the oil contains amounts of PUFA equal or greater to that found in algae. "This suggests that hypocholesterolemic effect of Aphanizomenon flos-aquae is likely to be influenced by factors other than its fatty acid content," the investigators conclude.

Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved