Effect of a standardized wheat bran preparation on serum lipids in young healthy males

Abstract

Feeding of a chemically standardized coarse wheat bran product in a dose of 0.5 g/kg body weight per day over a period of 4 weeks in young healthy male volunteers did cause a significant reduction in total serum cholesterol as well as in total serum triglycerides of 10 and 24%, respectively. Very low density lipoprotein-, high density lipoprotein-, and low density lipoprotein-cholesterol levels tended to diminish during bran feeding. The most marked reduction was observed in the high density lipoprotein- cholesterol fraction. Although the duration of this study was relatively short, it is concluded, that these results could have therapeutic consequences for the dietary management of hyperlipidemia. However, the lowering of high density lipoprotein-cholesterol could also be interpreted as unfavorable since an inverse relationship between high density lipoprotien-cholesterol levels and the occurrence of coronary heart disease has been established.

Long-Term Effect of Bran Ingestion on Lipid Metabolism in Healthy Man

“…Most authors [2,[10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] have concluded that total cholesterol remains stable after the addition of bran to the diet, while some others have noted a decrease [3,[19][20][21] or even an increase [22,23] in total cholesterol levels.…”

“…These studies are, however, mostly diffi cult to evaluate, as either the nature of the bran is unknown [2,13,18], or the diet fails to be controlled [3,17], or both [11, 12, 14-lb, 19-23],…”

“…After 12 days of 26 g/day of hard red spring wheat bran sup plementation, Munoz et al [4] have noted a 21% decrease in LDL cholesterol, while the use of soft white wheat bran under the same experimental conditions did not modify lipo protein cholesterol. In a medium-term exper iment (4 weeks) with uncontrolled diets and supplementation of 35 g/day of well-defined uncooked bran, van Berge-Henegowen et al [3] have noted a decrease of cholesterol in all classes of lipoproteins (VLDL. LDL and HDL).…”

“…Selective lipoprotein TG levels have been studied by van Berge-Henegowen et al [3], who report a nonsignificant decrease of VLDL-TG after 4 weeks of 35 g/day of un cooked bran supplementation. In our experi ment, we do not find significant modifica tions of selective lipoprotein to levels.…”

“…Various fibers have been tested in this respect. Studies on the effect of bran on the metabolism of lipids have yielded contradictory results: although bran fibers did not seem to influence blood cholesterol levels [1,2], two recent studies have shown that total cholesterol can de crease after bran ingestion [3,4]. We, thus, decided to evaluate 4 healthy subjects on controlled diets and to assess the effect of long-term (7 weeks) daily addition of 20 g wheat bran incorporated in bread on the me tabolism of lipids.…”