Cardiovascular Risks in Relation to Daidzein Metabolizing Phenotypes among Chinese Postmenopausal Women

Abstract

BackgroundStudies suggested that the inter-individual differences in metabolizing isoflavone daidzein to equol or O-desmethylangolensin (ODMA) might explain the inconsistency of the soy/isoflavones efficacy on cardiovascular health.ObjectivesThe study aims to evaluate the relationship between equol and ODMA phenotypes and cardiovascular risks with habitual isoflavone consumption in Chinese postmenopausal women.MethodsThis is a cross-sectional study among 726 prehypertensive postmenopal women who were screened for a randomized controlled trial. 648 women returned a daidzein-challenged urine samples for determination of equol and O-DMA production. 595 attended clinic visits for assessment of cardiovascular risks including body composition, blood pressure (BP), serum lipids, uric acid, high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), fasting glucose and free fatty acid (FFA).ResultsThe prevalences of equol and O-DMA producers were 53.2% and 60.9% respectively. Equol producers had higher fat free mass (p = 0.001), lower systolic (p = 0.01) and diastolic (p = 0.01) BP, serum triglyceride (p = 0.023), hs-CRP (p = 0.015) and FFA (p = 0.001) than non-producers. O-DMA producers had lower body fat% (p = 0.032), SBP (p = 0.02), total cholesterol (p = 0.002) than non-producers. The significant differences remained after further adjustment for potential confounders. The habitual soy isoflavones intake had little relation to cardiovascular risk factors in either equol/O-DMA producer phenotypes.ConclusionEquol/O-DMA producers had more favorable cardiovascular risk profiles than non-producers in prehypertensive postmenopausal women.

Metabolomics reveals differences between three daidzein metabolizing phenotypes in adults with cardiometabolic risk factors

“…The equol hypothesis proposes that the effectiveness of soy is related to the ability of individuals to produce equol and its resulting bioactivity . ODMA has been less well studied, but has been inversely associated with cardiovascular disease risk factors . In the general population, 80–95% of individuals are ODMA producers .…”

Advances in exploring equol production and application

“…In contrast with equol nonproducers, equol producers displayed significantly lower triglycerides as well as higher levels of high‐density lipoprotein cholesterol (Yoshikata, Myint, & Ohta, ). Equol producers were observed to have lower blood pressure, serum triglyceride, total cholesterol, and free fatty acid than equol nonproducers among 648 prehypertensive postmenopausal women, which led to the conclusion that equol brings a substantial therapeutic benefit in reducing the cardiovascular risk (Liu, Ho, Chen, Liu, & Woo, ). Furthermore, Deng et al demonstrated that equol could specifically inhibit large conductance Ca 2+ ‐activated K + (BKCa) current at very low concentrations for which they indicated that equol can be taken as a safe drug candidate to treat cerebral vascular disorders (Deng, Wang, & Xiao, ).…”

“…Equol is considered as being the most active metabolite of all soybean isoflavones. It shows higher antioxidant and estrogenic activity than its precursor daidzein (Gou, Jiang, Zheng, Tian, & Lin, 2015;Kamiyama, Kishimoto, Tani, Utsunomiya, & Kondo, 2009;Liu, Ho, Chen, Liu, & Woo, 2014). Moreover, different equol enantiomers tend to exhibit diversity in performing biological activity, which suggests that they are suitable for multiple clinical applications.…”

“…In contrast with equol nonproducers, equol producers displayed significantly lower triglycerides as well as higher levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (Yoshikata, Myint, & Ohta, 2017). Equol producers were observed to have lower blood pressure, serum triglyceride, total cholesterol, and free fatty acid than equol nonproducers among 648 prehypertensive postmenopausal women, which led to the conclusion that equol brings a substantial therapeutic benefit in reducing the cardiovascular risk (Liu, Ho, Chen, Liu, & Woo, 2014).…”

Cardiometabolic risk and gut microbial phytoestrogen metabolite phenotypes

“…Recent consumption could be through normal high dietary intake, as commonly seen in high soy-consuming populations, or through a daidzein challenge with food or supplement. There have been different ways of classifying producers and nonproducers from biological samples in cardiometabolic risk factor studies, including cut-offs [67][68][69][70], a ratio of metabolite to daidzein [71][72][73][74][75][76], and combination of these methods [77]. There has not been a systematic review of if there is significant misclassification introduced across the classification methods.…”